


Aspect of Bones

by Optimistic_Nihilist



Series: Roses Into the Abyss [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: :), Accidental Plot, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Horrortale (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Underfell (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Underswap (Undertale), Angst, Ask me questions in the comments and i'll answer 'em, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Cannibalistic Thoughts, Carrion is Too Soft, Carrion the Therapy Wendigo, Character Death, Child Murder, Classic Sans (Undertale), Crowe @ death; begone, Crowe and Raven are not related, Crowe and Raven remember Gaster, Domestic Fluff, Dubious Morality, Everyone Is Alive, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fontcest, Food Issues, Gee I wonder who that could be, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Memory Loss, Morally Ambiguous Character, Multi, No More Resets (Undertale), Non-Consensual Body Modification, Papyrus (Undertale) Remembers Resets, Revenge, Selective Muteness, Separation Anxiety, Soul Bond, Starvation, Surface monsters, Surprise appearance by a random human, THOT, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Trauma, Undertale Monsters on the Surface, W. D. Gaster is not related to Skelebros, We just have to get there first, Weird Plot Shit, Wendigo, and therapy, but not incest, everyone gets healing, no beta lets die, that is to say, there's a difference
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:00:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 24,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22298974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Optimistic_Nihilist/pseuds/Optimistic_Nihilist
Summary: You didn't know what eating those people could do to you. You didn't know how falling into the underground would change you. You can't bring yourself to regret it, either way.
Relationships: Papyrus (Undertale)/Reader, Papyrus/Sans (Undertale), Sans (Undertale)/Reader
Series: Roses Into the Abyss [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034058
Comments: 172
Kudos: 502





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for Spoilers, as this is technically the last book in the Roses into the Abyss series. As the entire series is a work in progress, and I'm currently writing both the beginning, the end, and everything in-between, be cautious and wary of the evil spoiler.

You remembered the fall. Wind whipping through you hair, body limp and relaxed as you stared up at the stars for what you thought was the last time. You remembered care, shown to you by the sweet woman that rescued you. You remembered going through that massive door, stepping into the snow on the other side.

You remember meeting the smaller skeleton who guided you, and the taller skeleton that was so sweet to you. You remember choosing to stay, the friendship of the skeletons somehow swaying you when the nice lady's kindness couldn't. You wonder, now, what you would have chosen if you could go back. 

You remember the slow, aching reveal of your tired soul. You remember falling in love with the skeletons, so slowly it was almost painful. You remember binding yourselves together, so tightly as to never escape. You remember the burst of new senses, being able to finally feel the magic all around you.

You remember waking in the middle of the night, feeling something incredibly  _ wrong _ . You remember going back to sleep.

When your thoughts line up, when you balance yourself enough to  _ see _ , you always feel so overwhelmed by the irony of this moment.

When you woke up, you remembered opening the door not to your new job, but to a blizzard. However, instead of snowflakes seeking shelter in your house, you felt the unmistakable feeling of dust sliding across your skin.

The next day, the news was out. Asgore was dead. The queen was dead. The human souls were gone.

You remember starving. The loss of fat on your bones, the hollowness of your cheeks in the mirror. Every day, getting worse and worse. 

You remembered Undyne and her proclamation. The burst of pain not your own across the bond, the anger that came not from you or your wounded bonded, but the other. You remembered the satisfaction he felt when she collapsed into dust for what she did to him.

When the humans came, and their bodies were left to rot, well.

You couldn't help yourself.

The first bite of human flesh was  _ delicious _ .

You didn't (couldn't) account for the consequences. You remember your taller bonded, growing large around his wounds, his teeth sharp and back bowed. You remember your smaller bonded growing thick, his sockets empty without the magic to sustain eyelights. His teeth grew in thick and sharp. 

You remember your calves growing longer, unproportionally, until they snapped near the ankle. You remember your hips growing wider, thighs thicker at the bone. You remember the point your tailbone broke skin, the fur that covered you when clothes hurt your sensitive skin too much. You remember your toes curling together, until there was only boney hoof where they used to be. You remember the slow, careful stretching of your skull, until it resembled more of a deer skull than anything that used to be human.

You remember the caring of your bonded as your form stretched and shifted, always considerate and kind as everything ached and shifted and moved until your body was satisfied.

You remember the first glance into the mirror.

  
  


You don't remember much, after that. The taller skeleton could be forgetful at the worst of times, but without the smaller skeleton's stability, you found the most of it slipping away from him. Names, events, all of it faded in time. You needed  _ something  _ to call one-another, however, so taller skeleton became Crowe, smaller skeleton's became Raven, and you became Carrion.

You remember being the centerpoint, lending your stability to them. You remember taking some of their memory problems in exchange.

You can't remember the woman who saved you's name, or what she saved you from. You don't remember the in-between states, the dates and activities you all went through to fall in love with each other. Your name is gone, blown away like so much dust before a snowstorm.

You don't mind. Your stability allowed Raven to regain some of his own, and Crowe to develop some of  _ his  _ own. With his new stability, Crowe could actually fall asleep on his own now, which helped a lot when moving meant spent energy which none of you had to spare. 

If you could spare the energy, you would take the time to be grateful for the bond between the three of you. Even talking takes too much energy these days. Having effortless communication saved your SOULs more than once, in this harried place.

You curled around them, eyes closed and senses open. It was your turn to Hunt, today. Your senses stretched, the feel of the magic in the air- pitifully low, as always- brushing against you as mentally, you moved through the Underground.

There were many things to be thankful for, when you had the time to give them proper thought. The fact that you could sense magic to an almost insane degree was one of them. It was the thing that threw you off the most, when you three bonded and their magic pooled with yours. Finally being able to feel the world the way they did, but a lot  _ more _ .

It threw them off, too. Usual problems with bonding tended to be 'our souls meshed together so well we don't know who is who anymore' or 'i keep seeing what they see in the corner of my eye'. No one was expecting 'incredibly detailed sensor, send help'. 

Something pinged against your senses, and you rose from your relaxed position. One limb under Crowe's head to act as a pillow, one limb over Raven to act as a blanket, you slowly removed them as you stretched up. 

On all fours, you trotted away from the nest of fabrics like a rather large dog, shaking your russet fur. Even though you  _ could  _ stand, nowhere was fully equipped for a monster of your caliber. You were tall. Extremely tall. Besides, it was so much faster to chase prey on all fours. Your new body seemed to be built for it.

Carefully, you craned your neck forwards to gently close your front teeth around the doorknob. Another careful half-turn and push, and you were outside. You didn't shiver, marching forwards through the cold. Behind you, your short, ratty tail slammed the door shut.

You stretch out your senses again, making sure, and continue your lope forwards. A human was right outside the Ruins doors, probably scared and lost, completely unknowing of the dust piles disturbed on their way. It was so strange that you were just like this, once.

Except, well, really not.

You kept your pace, cutting through the treeline, which would provide you much more cover. The human wasn't moving anymore. Was it caught in one of Crowe's traps? You peeked out of the bush, and noticed that no, decidedly not. It just decided to fall over and cry a lot, for some reason. The blue and purple striped shirt they wore was wet with their tears.

You burst out of the treeline at a harsh sprint, and the little human only had enough time to look up before your front claws dug into the soft bit of their neck. They burbled for a few seconds, confusion and fear on their face as their short, brown hair grew sticky with their own blood. You bent over, and gently grabbed their neck with your teeth, the blood pooling in your mouth when summoning a tongue took too much. Waste not, want not, after all. 

You trotted back up the trail, proud as a peacock at your catch. The human struggled feebly, but grew limp not even halfway to your house. By the time you were there, you couldn't even sense them. Not in a way that wouldn't be confused with the furniture.

Something fluctuated, over where your senses started to fade. You ignored it. If some idiot wanted to play with their magic, it was none of your business.

The door was closed, so you leaned back on your mind legs, straightening to your full height, gripped the doorknob, and kept your claws out of the wood. You dropped back down to all fours, walking forwards with the door already closing behind you.

The fluctuations came closer. 

You placed the corpse on the kitchen table, and quickly darted forwards to take an arm and a leg for yourself. Hunter gets first pick, after all, and this human was big enough for it to be a full meal. You were already signaling Crowe and Raven, chewing through the meat and bone. Already your reserves seemed larger, with just that bite. You took another, and directed drops of magic towards Crowe and Raven. The arm was half gone, not even counting the bone.

The fluctuations came closer. Was someone coming for the next pick of meat? You thought that wasn't until next week.

Crowe was the first, carrying Raven on his back as they crept forwards. He leaned on you as he sat down beside you, Raven only standing long enough to sit at your other side. You raised up enough to cut the meat with a claw, and offered the bits to your two bonded at your sides. Blood dripped down their jaws, too hungry to be worried about manners.

The fluctuations were even closer now. It was probably some idiot begging for food. You had half a mind to eat  _ them _ , such careless magic use.

Crowe kept one arm around you, running his boney claws through your ratty fur. Raven did the same on the other side, both of them almost collapsing onto you with their weight. Blood collected on your tatty skin, dried until you couldn't tell what color it was anymore, and everything smells like rot and rust. To you, it smelled like home.

The fluctuations were at the door. You turned to growl at it but froze when it passed through the door and dug its claws into your skin. Your growl twisted into a yelp as you turned to grab your skeletons for stability, tightening your grip to keep them in your hold as reality stopped working and everything kept  _ spinning _ .

You collapsed onto a cold concrete floor with a harsh choke, keeping everything down with only sheer willpower. Your skeletons landed on top of you, a harsh clatter of bone on bone as still wet blood splattered across the cold grey floor. You were worried for a second before vertigo slapped you across the face, the ambient magic wherever you are so high you were siphoning it almost on instinct. You could sense  _ everything _ , the six magical signatures above you and their similarities, the weird warping signature above that, and the feeling of  _ life  _ just a bit more forwards from the six signatures.

You took a moment to look around. You are in a basement, with stairs leading up to a door and a strange box machine in the middle of the room, with desks over that way facing the wall and covered in papers. Crowe wasn't responding to your nudges, and Raven felt so sickly it was probably only the fact that you kept a tight grip on the magic pool that kept him from throwing it up.

Two signatures moved closer to the basement door, and you held down a whimper through sheer effort. Unknowns, with wounded bonded? Your whimper shifted into a subvocal growl, rusty tattered fur standing on end.

You were ready for anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You ARE PREPARED!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are not prepared.

“...What that was?” Someone asked from upstairs.

“I’m goin’, I’m goin,” The person on the stairs answered, and you squinted to study them. Tallish, with a clean, orange hoodie. You blinked, catching a hint of ivory, and your growl tapered off.

You take it back. You were not prepared. Are those actual, living skeleton monsters?! Your eyes swung to the other one, and you blinked.

There was another skeleton monster beside him, short and stout and incredibly similar to Raven, before the Famine and the Feast. Your eyes swung back to the taller one, and yes, he did look incredibly similar to Crowe, before he changed. The fuck?

Your memory was shit, but you  _ distinctly  _ remembered snatches of a conversation between Raven and you. Specifically involving the rarity of skeleton monsters. What were the odds of two of them, in a place the three of you were forced to go? Ones that look like Raven and Crowe? Coincidences don’t exist; something is wrong.

Your wariness rose, but your LV banked. Skeletons were rare enough without you adding their dust to the pile. You now wanted to bundle them up, inform them of the Famine, and teach them the skills to survive. Sharing food with people unbonded to you would be a struggle, but the payoff of Crowe and Raven not being alone as the last skeletons of the Underground would be worth it.

The two skeletons reached the bottom of the stairs while you were having a crisis, squinting in the darkness. Your desire to bundle them up rose. They couldn’t even adjust to complete darkness like you could, and they didn’t even smell like iron to keep the humans away. 

The one in the orange hoodie sniffed and sneezed, covering a hand over his mouth as his features twisted in disgust. Now that he was closer, you could see his eyelights, orange as his clothing.

“What  _ is  _ that smell?” He coughed out a complaint, and you kept your body crouched over your two fallen bonded. Skeleton or not, you were a bit more solid than your two bonded and could thus take a hit better. Just because these two were skeletons, and so  _ innocent _ , did not mean you would trust them with your bonded. Your bonded are  _ yours. _

The smaller skeleton frowned, and held up a hand. In an instant, little blue fairy-lights were hovering over his palm, illuminating your face in an eerie blue glow.

Like a teenage girl going into the wrong movie theatre, the smaller skeleton dropped the light and flinched back with a screech, summoning a massive bone hammer and raising it in a defensive position, accidentally flipping the light switch behind him.

Unfazed, you blinked at him. That was kind of an overreaction, you thought. The other skeleton was calmer, even as his magic flared, already halfway to summoning a glowing bone.

The three of you froze in a silent stare-down, orange and blue vs you, and your skin prickled as you spread your stance.

You stumbled and almost fell when Raven rolled out from under you, groaning. He curled up outside the shelter of your body, getting onto his hands and knees with a harsh hiss and a burst of intense motion sickness through your bond. You swayed with it, similarly effected even if not to the extent he was.

He gripped your fur as he rose, the other hand on his head, as he opened his mouth to speak for the first time since the Feast.

“Th’ fuck was that?” He grumbled lowly, his voice harsh with disuse. You chittered back, a nodding shrug and slow blink turning into a half-bow his only answer. You have no idea. You perked up as the skeletons moved out of the corner of your sockets, reminded of their presence.

You shifted your long neck until your head rested against his arm and gently pushed him towards the other skeletons, motioning for him to turn to them. More skeletons! He pooled his magic, the bloated blue pupil surrounded by red light flickering visibly as he took the time to study them in the light. His grip on your fur tightened, then relaxed, probably from the intense amount of ambient magic around them flashing in his darkness-attuned eyes.

The two skeletons were wary, stance wide for fighting or fleeing, eyelights trained on the two of you. 

“Th’ fuck?” Raven repeated, fists tightening and untightening as he studied the strangers. You blinked at them slowly, before a burst of awareness sent you off-balance, falling to your side in surprise. Raven landed on top of you as you fell, and you  _ oof _ ed at his bony weight on your lungs. Crowe, besides the two of you, squinted as he rose up, shaking his head.

“Raven? Carrion?” He muttered, voice rough and quiet. His hand was in the air towards the two of you, and you rose up carefully, pressing your skull against his searching fingers. You braced as he pressed his weight against you, Raven almost fully on your back, as he used the contact to rise to his feet. Once on his feet he looked around, and confusion was bombarding you on two sides.

“Where are we?” He asked. You whined at the emotional bombardment, nudging at Crowe’s ankles with your knuckles to get him to stop. You gestured to the two skeletons with your skull and shoulders, trusting in Raven’s balance and his tight grip on your fur to keep him on your back.

_ Look/See/Attention/Observe! _ You sent along the bond.  _ Similar/Family/Together! _ You did  _ not _ imagine the wistfulness in his voice when Raven spoke of them being the last skeletons, or Crowe’s bitter want of family echoing through the bond while you two spoke. Observe, idiots, there’s more skeletons right there! You two could be related to them!

Your two bonded, being idiots, stayed back and did not approach, the wariness you could feel through the bond echoing the faces of the two skeletons still studying you all closely.

_ Fine. _ You sniffed mentally, a bit sad that your two bonded did not appreciate the presence of the two other skeletons as much as you thought they would. Carefully, broadcasting curiosity, you crept towards them, sure to broadcast every slow movement towards the other two skeletons. On your back, Raven tensed, his eyelight gone as he braced for combat. Behind you, Crowe wavered between staying frozen and staying with you, his hesitancy broadcasting as loud as his voice used to be before the Famine.

The two skeletons, mentally labeled  _ Orange  _ and  _ Blue _ for simplicity's sake, tensed as well, magic flaring in a careful threat display even as Blue’s massive bone hammer faded. Blue’s hands were raised in front of him in a block, his star-shaped eyelights focused on you and you alone as you came closer to him. You slowed as you came closer, almost reduced to a snail’s crawl now, careful to project only innocent curiosity as his hands came closer to your face. 

Something about the situation was incredibly familiar, which was why you chose this exact action; if this skeleton was anything like you, he would be calmed by the trust shown. 

Finally, the tension singing a high note against your SOUL, you closed your eyes and pressed his frozen hands to your face, purring externally and internally projecting superiority and calm trust. The skeleton might have much more magic than you do at the moment, but you had a Secret Weapon, called ‘i’m not a monster originally so i don't really get most of the benefits’, and labeled ‘i can’t call out souls like a monster and thus all my fights are Physical’.

Most monsters (but not your bonded of course) were absolute pussies when it came to physical fights. When you’re built like a jelly mold or a house made of toothpicks, you go down exactly  _ like _ a jelly mold and a house made of toothpicks. Because monster fights usually go ‘*pulls out soul* *shows idiot human Magical Superiority*’ this makes sense for them to have little to no physical defence, but you  _ can’t  _ pull out souls, and the only thing superior your soul has is your sensing ability. You don’t even have a magical attack to use, unless you, being made of somewhat-magic, physically attacking counts as a physical attack. 

In short, if these skeletons decide to throw hands you are completely confident in your and your bondeds’ ability to reduce them to dust. 

The blue smaller skeleton, completely unaware of your internal bragging moment, pat your skull hesitantly, and you rewarded him with a loud purr.  _ Good skeleton. _

The moment ended as the closed door upstairs banged harshly, startling everyone in the room into taking up arms again. A loud, harsh voice echoed through the door and down the stairs as it was brutally ripped open with a crash.

“..’S TAKING SO LONG?!” In the doorway was another massive skeleton, and in the theme of the few you have met, he seemed to have decided that eyelight color decides color scheme. Not that dark red, red, and more red didn’t look good on him; it really brought out the massive scar over his eye socket. Threatening, you nodded internally in appreciation, before he ruined that image by slumping down and rolling his head with a loud groan. Did he just roll his eyelights at you?

“DAMMIT, SANS!” He yelled out into another room, and both you and Raven flinched. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also known as; Reader has no self preservation, Author tears her hair out trying to engineer a fight scene when none of the characters are cooperating, and Reader has watched How to Train Your Dragon too many times for her own sanity. I tried to add another hundred words or so to this, so that it reached the legendary 2,000 the last chapter was, but it just. wouldn't. cooperate.
> 
> Try not to anticipate swift updates like this often; college starts next week for me, and prep time is running low. But people actually commented, and favorited this, and said how much they love it, so I shat out this quick chapter as a treat. Remember kids, Comments + Kudos is the alchemical formula for More Updates.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay I lied. Here's another chapter. In my defence, people commented and left kudos.
> 
> Edit: here's the official art for Healthy!Carrion on my tumblr.  
> https://negentropic.tumblr.com/post/190336671801/healthycarrion-from-aspect-of-bones-and-no

"...THAT  _ MACHINE  _ OF YOURS…" You heard vaguely as the tall red skeleton, Red for short, marched towards whoever he was talking to.

The door was open, hostilities were halted, so as Crowe shared Looks with the other two skeletons you trotted up to the stairs and decided to explore! Raven, still on your back, chuckled at your enthusiasm, even as he chewed over the name choice.

You didn't react. You knew the instant it was spoken aloud that Sans was Raven's original name. You also knew that his name was  _ his  _ choice, however, and not your decision to interfere with. Your name is Carrion, will always  _ be  _ Carrion, and even the knowledge of your original name wouldn't change that. You are too different to how you used to be originally to use that you's name. Raven might think differently, but that was  _ his decision _ to make and not yours. You had enough of your own problems without taking up the emotional support of the relationship.

You peeked out of the doorway cautiously, feeling Crowe's eyelights watching your back. You were in a dining room/kitchen now, with half of it being a kitchen and the other half being a dining table and chairs. There was an island in the middle of the room between the kitchen and dining table, with barstools. Behind the massive dining table (how many people  _ live here?! _ ) There was a big window with ample view of the outside world.

Your eyelights shifted into deep blue stars as you froze, hesitant hope creeping through the cracks in your psyche. That, right there, shining through the window and illuminating the whole room, was  _ sunlight _ . Not the false sunlight of Snowdin, filtered through the clouds. Not the false light of Hotland, which was all lava and fire, but actual, _ real life sunlight. _

You only barely remember sunlight, enough to recognize it by sight alone, and  _ there it is _ .

Not even god could stop you now. You moved forward, hesitant. Hunger has driven you to hallucination before. But just like the sky is blue, and the night sky was the most beautiful thing  _ ever _ , there was sunlight from an actual  _ sun  _ shining out of that window.

Raven gasped as soon as the sunlight hit his face, and the second you felt heat along your fur you purred. Absolutely  _ nothing  _ could stop you now. You, Raven, and Crowe were on the surface. Success and pride so deep and heartfelt it almost knocked your bonded to his knees washed over you like a tide, and you began listing the things you loved about the surface that Raven and Crowe would now get to enjoy.

_ Warm baths. _ Because Snowdin water came out of Hel's realm, and nothing could convince you otherwise.  _ Swimming. Running old paths. Stargazing. Twilight. Plants. Reading. The smell of old books.  _ You were mentally melting. Snowdin was cold as absolute fuck and nothing seemed to sink the heat down to your bones anymore, and this sunlight was absolutely  _ divine. _ On your back, Raven was already half-asleep, and you were very quickly following him, melting into a puddle of bones and fur under the warm sunlight.

Crowe walked up the stairs, hands gripping harshly on the handrail. Unlike you, his form actively rebelled against being on all fours, resulting in his stooped posture and hunched back. The fact that his backbone had broken- and healed wrong- absolutely did not help. 

You purred at him from your cuddle-puddle of sunlight, flicking your ratty tail from side to side. Surprise flickered across the bond from the tall skeleton as his eyes caught the rays of light, and when his eyelights finally rested back on you, your arms and legs were open, baring your stomach to Crowe in open invitation.

You had an intense weakness for physical contact of any kind, but especially cuddles, which thankfully your bonded were amenable to. You successfully converted them to the Cuddles/Contact Church before long. Cuddle piles were just so much easier on everyone, when everything ached and danger could burst through the door at any moment waving a spear.

You curled around Crowe, an arm and his head as a pillow and an arm over his body as a blanket. Raven was dead asleep on top of you, curled into a ball and absorbing sunlight like the starving monsters you all are. You could not blame him; despite all efforts to the contrary, the three of you are absolutely, 100% taking a nap on some random stranger's kitchen floor in a cuddle pile. On the Surface. In the sunlight.

You kept a socket open as the yelling from the other room comes closer, actually forming words if you focus beyond siphoning magic into your starving mage pool. 

"RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!" Someone was very loud as they walked back into the kitchen, telling their story with waving arms to their four person audience. It was Blue.

Besides blue was a skeleton with a still blue but darker color scheme, which you mentally labeled  _ Cyan _ , switching Blue's nickname to  _ Celeste _ . It would be too confusing otherwise. 

Next to them was Orange and Red, again, except Red somehow gained a shorter skeleton friend with the exact same color scheme, but lighter. Red became  _ Wine _ , and smaller red skeleton became  _ Blood,  _ for different shades of red just like Cyan and Celeste were shades of blue.

Orange chuckled. "It even let him pet it," he added, which… is he talking about you? Calling you an 'it'? That's kind of rude.

As they step closer, you notice how only Cyan seems to notice you there. You find that amusing, up until Wine and Blood choke on nothing and reach up to cover their faces, Blood's face grim. Orange dropped his grin, looking almost sadly at the two of them but lacking any emotional complexity.

"Yeah. For some reason, they smell like  _ that. _ " He gestured to the air between them, and Blood catches sight of the three of you on the floor. He makes a disgusted face, and you raise your head to frown at him. Shut the fuck up, Blood. 

Wine sees Blood making a face, and  _ also  _ makes a disgusted face at the three of you on the floor. You are, at this point, absolutely ready to throw hands. You have no idea why there are so many skeletons, why you're on the surface, or where you are, but you are absolutely ready to smack Tall, Dark, and 'looks like he got shat out of a Hot Topic store' if he decides to comment.

Raven blinks at them from his perch on your side, and visibly debates whether or not to talk first. Starving for so long left him loose on the whole 'social situations' thing, especially since his friend on the other side of the Ruins doors was the only person other than Crowe and you who he spoke to. And as you well know, everyone in the Ruins is dead.

"Hey." The skeletons  _ not  _ aware of your presence flinch and spin to stare at Raven and you. "B'fore you come to a d'cision," his voice is touching the edge of openly mocking. "mind if we take a shower first?" 

Apparently, your wish for hot water rubbed off on him. Or maybe he was just tired of uninformed idiots complaining about how he  _ smelled. _ You didn't care; if they thought your scent mattered to you, they should find someone with an above-human range of smelling powers. Hate all they want; to you, the smell of rot, blood, and bone dust smells like home.

That does not mean you will refuse the offer of hot water, though. Smelling nice to you or not, all the dried blood on your skin  _ itches _ . It keeps ratting up your fur into sad clumps, and you want to be fluffy so you can earn more pets from nice skeletons.

Bad skeletons don't get to give you pets, though. Bad skeletons get  _ bites. _

Where were you? Oh yeah.

Cerulean came to your water-loving rescue, "SURE!" He smiled, bouncing in place. "THERE'S ONE UPSTAIRS, AT THE END OF THE HALL!" Just for that, Cerulean gets to pet you as much as he likes. Raven nodded a thanks to the short skeleton, completely ignoring the other three as he gave a quick tug on your mane. You can almost feel the brownie points the sky-colored skeleton earns with his easy acceptance.

You shifted to three limbs, Crowe hanging onto your underside like a sloth, supported by your free arm. He's still asleep as Raven rides you up the stairs like a trusted mount. There, at the end of the hall, just as he said, is a bathroom large enough for the three of you to fit in. You're careful as you set Crowe down on the tile, unwilling to wake him when sleep was always so hard coming.

Raven twisted the knob and the shower came on. You stuck a hand under the cold water and shook it off of your fur. The water, upon contact with your hand, turned red. 

...maybe you were a  _ bit _ filthy.

As soon as you could see steam curling at the top of the shower head, you popped into the shower, immediately getting soaked. You would have let Raven go first in the shower, except you have lots of dirty fur and not enough hands to deal with it. Also, the shower was huge, easily big enough for you- on four legs or two-  _ and  _ Crowe to fit into. In fact, you rose up on two legs and started rubbing the water into your fur. At your feet, the water turned a sickly pink.

Raven stepped in behind you, and you turned your head so that the water hit his chest as you rub the dried blood out of matted hair with help from the water already drenching you. You're not a dick, after all. You share the hot water.

When the bathroom, even with the fan on, is absolutely covered in steam, and your fur is free from blood and dirt as it's ever been, and Crowe had woken up for long enough to wash down himself, you all stepped out of the shower and wrapped yourselves around each other. Comfy, and content, and warm down to your deepest bones.

Crowe starts with a sliver, barely even a half-mouthful of magic, and runs it through his bones, green sparks lighting down his crooked back. This is the largest Mana pool you've ever  _ pooled _ together, and if the shit happening downstairs turns into a fight Crowe will be absolutely sure to be in tip top shape. 

You take a drop and a half of magic and blow out a wisp of flame, fur drying quickly and bone drying with it, adding to the steam gathered on the ceiling.

As Raven reaches for the pool, you take a moment to study your bonded now that they're not crusted with human blood. Ivory iridescent in the sunlight, the little bumps and scars enhancing and not drawing away from the sight. Crowe is tall, even with his broken back, and four arms makes for a  _ lot  _ of fight. Raven may be shorter, but not by much, and when he fought it was like he was  _ made  _ of magical prowess. Raven, now covered in his bonded's massive grey shirt, hopped back up on your back as Crowe, clad in only his jeans, again used you to stand.

Whatever comes up, you three are ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 12 at night. Is it just a thing where my magical, 2000+ word pieces seem to happen when I'm high on sleep deprivation? Anyways, hope you enjoyed this massive train wreck, where I wanted Carrion to Fight Someone but they kept getting distracted by Sunlight and Fresh Air. Blugh.
> 
> If you're wondering why they sleep so much; they're recovering (yes, recovering) from starvation, and sleeping conserves energy. Even the energetic Papyrus-turned-Crowe had to bow to that inevitability. They used to hibernate for weeks, and were actually a half step from Falling Down. Take that as you will.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, story? I try to write 2,000 words and you give me 1,000. I try to sleep and you give me 2,000 words. Is this going to be a pattern?

"Alternate Universes?" Raven asked, hands in the oversized shirt's pockets and externally as cool as a cucumber.

Internally, you could feel the math equations and question marks floating through his psyche. They lost Crowe to the explanation long ago; he was in the kitchen, with the other Papyri. He prefers the more physical sciences, that being cooking and punching people and building things. Raven was the one with a degree in quantum physics. You, personally, were more of a soft sciences sort of person. It comes with the package of reading as much as you used to.

The other Sans- were they really Sanses when your Sans isn't a Sans, but a Raven?- nodded. It was probably a sign of how much science fiction- and fiction in general- you read that the whole ‘Alternate Universes’ thing didn’t make you throw up question marks. You sort of suspected something like that, with the similarities between all of them. Cousins or distant relatives your ass, genetics doesn’t work like that. Even magical genetics; when your physical body was just an expression of your soul, there was a lot more variation between monsters, even closely related ones.

It was still a bit of a mind fuck, though it made sense. For instance; Celeste is technically a Papyrus analogue, despite being a physical Sans. It made somewhat sense to you, because Crowe has  _ always _ been supportive and kind, but thinking about what would have to happen to make something like that come to pass on the three of you was mind boggling. Raven is Raven, and Crowe is Crowe. Thinking of them in any other manner was awkward and weird.

You stretch out your senses as Raven interacted with the other skeletons, and mentally brushed against them. Yep; they all feel completely different. Celeste feels like dancing snowfall, Cyan like thick ice, Orange feels like amber and alcohol, almost, and your bonded feel like blood and pearl ivory. In the kitchen, Wine feels like fire and sunlight, with the last Papyrus feeling like spiked punch. Their experiences shaped them into completely different monsters, even if they looked similar and acted along the same wavelengths. 

Well, wavelengths similar to  _ them. _ Despite being skeleton monsters, Crowe and Raven are not related except maybe very, very distantly. Raven is a Summoner subtype skeleton monster, and Crowe is a Healer subtype. You, despite looks, are not whatever a ‘gaster blaster’ is, and are offended by the comparison to your bondeds’ old roommate. And offended in general. What is it with these skeletons and assuming your sentience? Forget throwing hands, you are ready to throw  _ down. _

Raven nudged you, a flicker of  _ Patience/Predator waiting/Trap set _ calming your nerves.

“So, what’s different about your Underground?” Orange asked, leaning against the couch. You braced as a flicker of agitation and bared teeth traveled down the bond, and sent comfort towards Crowe in sympathy.  _ Isn’t it obvious?  _

Orange is quickly rising up your shitlist.

Raven chuckled, and gave a soft tug on his scarred eye socket. “Well, first of all, only one human stayed Underground long enough to tell us ‘er name.” Which was true. They gave you your name; Carrion. You only heard about Frisk from the other monsters. “An’ Toriel didn’ wanna keep ‘er out of the Ruins.” Also true. Not that it stopped you.

He tugged at his scarred eye socket again, face blank and dark as an ocean rolled under his skin. Sometimes the best lie was to tell the truth, but talking about this was never fun. “‘Ere was another, but they blew through the Underground so quick it was only the day after we were told the King and Queen were dead; that the human souls were gone.” You leaned against his leg in comfort, sympathy rolling through you as Crowe braced the two of you against the emotional onslaught.

“Most monsters fell down.” Crowe spoke up from behind the couch, spooking the other skeletons. You were silent. “No King, no Queen, and the Royal Guard Captain’s first decision was to take any human falling down, gather all of us up, and kill them right in front of us.” You cannot even  _ think  _ the Royal Guard Captain’s name without going into a full, blackout rage, so you don’t even try. 

Crowe gently rubbed Raven’s head, green sparks traveling down his arm to gather around the massive scar where the hole through his head used to be. “It was a slaughter, after that.” Crowe finished, all three of you absolutely certain never to reveal your special eating habits to the other skeletons. They are too innocent and would not understand whatsoever. 

They would not understand the clawing, aching hunger that scraped against your insides like living beasts, the terror always along the edges of your minds, always wondering  _ will today be the last? Will we have enough? _ They would never sympathize with the first bite of human flesh, how you felt the magic pool stabilize and shoved your morals aside because you were watching your world burn and eating humans staved off the horrors you could see approaching out of the corner of your eyes. You remember going blind, only your own sensing abilities to guide you and your loved ones, because seeing was too much energy in a world where a drop of magic could only kill you faster. Would they do anything but judge, when your options were to live or die and you wanted to live? When the only thing keeping you from nightmares was the feeling of your bonded against you, when the hallucinations faded with their touch, and every day was a fight against feeling their dust against your skin instead of bone?

No. They would judge you, and hate you, and lock you away when freedom was a blink away. You would not, could not, do anything to squander that, no matter how their misconceptions raked against your skin. Let them believe you a dog, as less than barren of thought.

You would  _ bite them. _

You still remember Raven sobbing, HP falling, when his first summon  _ died _ because none of you had the magic to share anymore.

You still remember Crowe’s silent tears when he couldn’t even summon green sparks anymore, how betrayed he felt when his first magic failed him because magic was working too hard keeping him alive to spare anything for others.

You were growling subvocally again, glaring at some spot in the middle distance as your SOUL flashed with your emotions. You were the brick wall, the silver shield, the solid mass between your bonded and doom for far too long, and even hypothetical harm coming to them made your magic spike with protectiveness.

Crowe dropped a bag of snacks in front of you, and your feelings faded as your nose caught the salty scent. Chips? Distracted, you dug into the meal, not tasting anything besides  _ food food food _ . Raven caught the edge of the bag, stealing it from your maw with an amused grin and a short huff as you whined in objection.

Your skeletons had been talking while you were distracted, sorting out rooms and such. You felt warm and fuzzy every time irritation spiked when the other skeletons referred to you as an ‘it’ or a pet. That was one of the best things about being bonded; no matter what, they always had your back when you were ready to kick ass.

"So, what should we call.you?" Blood asked, crossing his arms over his chest with a harsh smirk. "I vote we call em Crooks and Axe," he added, and you blinked slowly. Did he just?

You mark Blood down mentally as a bad skeleton. The asshole.

"Why not just use our names?" Raven asked, completely understandably in your opinion.

"What, Sans and Papyrus?" Red's smirk widened. "Oh,  _ certainly _ . It's not like  _ that'd  _ get confusing." Sarcasm, the height of wit. You stared at him, deadpan, and slowly applauded him in your mind.  _ Asshole.  _ And _ none of the others are disagreeing. _

"No." Raven eyes Blood like he's being deliberately stupid. You fall in love with him all over again. "My name isn't Sans. It's Raven." Well, that answered your question. He threw a thumb at Crowe behind him. "That's Crowe." He dropped his hand to pet you, and you bask in the attention, radiating love and approval. "This is Carrion."

The skeletons stare, and you suddenly feel immensely fed up with their stupidity. You waved a _ Exploring/Looking/Finding _ through the bond and sat up, trotting up the stairs and nosing into the room you were to inhabit. You needed a nap before you got deliberately antagonistic and your bondmates start to egg you on. 

You looked through the room. Bed, drawers, windows, the whole works. Quickly, you pooled everything even slightly fluffy onto the floor along with the mattress, chewing on your claws to get them to non-stabby points so you could grip things without leaving holes in the fabric. Once the nest was completed, you flopped over it, twisting back and forth on your back and shedding fur and dust everywhere so that it smelled like you. Finally satisfied, you stretch your arms and legs to the sides and closed your eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Carrion struggles with intensely complex thought, mostly because when Undyne shattered Sans' skull Carrion kind of took part of that injury upon themself in order to keep the three-way trinity between them balanced. Before this, Papyrus had minor memory problems (due to resets and being aware of them). Yes, Carrion is happy to act the part of a massive puppy, but that doesn't mean you should treat them as though they are one; pets are fine, cuddles are ok with permission, but Stretch is going to get bitten if he keeps assuming.
> 
> Oh! Another change; since Frisk showed up while Sans was asleep, they never met Sans, Papyrus or Carrion. Frisk also did not encounter Chara, thus pooling their determination and taking over Resets. Chara was haunting Carrion at the time. Flowey was the Reseting one, and Flowey was one of the first to get dusted and eaten when the Famine came. Also; Raven is NOT a Judge due to this! He's never needed the ability, and therefor never was given the responsibility, due to Frisk speedrunning through everything at sonic speed.
> 
> I've been leaving hints all over the place, by the way, but what do you think Carrion's soul color is?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one fought me. I wanted it to be longer, it refused, I wanted some Skeletal Interaction and it threw another skeleton onto my lap.
> 
> Edit Nov 25th 2020: Reworked the whole thing to better fit changing plot

_Abyssal darkness. A clawing, aching, cowering void where no light dared touch. Fetid, black pustules pulsed like a twisted heartbeat, always slightly off-beat._

_Movement. Silent as the void it inhabited, a creature walked through the not-forests, lit by a soft, Ultraviolet glow._

_From within the cage you built of yourself, you smiled down._

_The skeleton, old and war-torn and paranoid up to the nines, sent relief spiraling back._

_"Starlight." He greeted, ivory lips parting in a brief grin as nimble fingers twisted in the silent language of moving hands. "Is it time to hunt?"_

_The glow of deep purple eyelights centered on your soul, and you smiled, a gentle siren's song rising from your still form as your partner shed his anxious guise and rose, bones clicking, to his full height._

_The eyes in the shadows **moved**_.

Nausea nutshotted you like a bullet train, and you stumbled out of the bed on all fours, already halfway to the bathroom before you knew where you were going. You almost bonked your head on the toilet seat before you jumped into the bathtub, keeping your breathing steady as shakes ran up and down your body. Holy fucking shit, that was _way_ more vivid than you were used to. Your heart hadn’t calmed down, and was still assaulting the inside of your ribcage as you laid there, not quite feeling anything as you grasped for whatever the fuck that was.

A warning? A nightmare? Your nightmares usually are about Raven and Crowe dying, not about fighting _entire fucking armies_ and the complicated question of light vs dark. Is your subconscious trying to tell you something?

If it's trying to tell you not to eat before bed you would like an opportunity to smack your subconscious.

It was... Something you can't quite remember. At what point did your brain decide to give you a panic attack about shit? That was completely unnecessary, unwanted, you don't even have a _gag reflex_ why does the world keep _nutshotting_ you with _essence of fucking motion sickness._

You have a headache now, great. You rub your skull and feel two nubs where smooth bone is supposed to be. Turning to the mirror, you stand up and study yourself, still rubbing gentle circles around the aching ivory. Since when have you had horns? You shake your head, the cool feeling of your palms a balm to the aching of your head.

Now that you're awake and never going to sleep like that again, it's time to find where your bonded have fucked off to. No fucking wonder you had a nightmare; they're downstairs and not cuddled up with you like you're used to.

You have half a mind to find wherever they are and no matter what they're in the middle of, flop down on their laps. Because you just had a nightmare and your bonded weren't there to shoo it away, and that will be your revenge. Interrupting their shit with your massive fluff. 

You take a moment to pat yourself, and get distracted. Holy shit are you fluffy and soft. So soft it should be illegal! You use your long neck to rub your soft fluff against your skull, tilting this way and that to spread the fluff _everywhere._ Are you shedding again? A bit of fluff and dust goes up your nose, and you sneeze. Yep, you’re shedding. You sneeze again, and spend a minute rubbing the fluff off your face onto the hard floor before trotting away.

You nose through the door, using the side of your skull to push it out of the way as you look around. It’s dark out, and you’re quiet as you go down the stairs. You look through the kitchen, and through the massive window you can see the stars, as well as the outside.

The other skeletons live in a secluded place, you conclude, because there are more than a handful of stars you can see outside and light pollution isn’t hiding them from your eyes. Gods above, you can _see them_ . Your eyelights shift to stars, reflecting the quiet starlight in your breast and the balls of light so far away. By every quiet thing in existence, do you love the night sky. You ached to grab a telescope and spend the night staring up at them, but you had naughty bonded to punish for leaving you alone. Reluctantly, you tore your eyes from those bright stars, and focused on the bond. You hesitated- the stars are _really pretty_ , and Raven has always loved them as much as you, and maybe they were distracted looking at the surface. They could be forgiven, maybe.

You frowned and prodded mentally at the bond, and flared out your senses. Where could those naughty skeletons be? You felt them nowhere near the house, and flared your senses farther. The woods around you tinkled gently, old windchimes singing on the edge of your hearing as you searched through the underbrush. You stretched a bit farther, out into the road, and then pulled back a little. Nowhere could you feel a living SOUL besides your own.

You whimpered, anxiety rising like a wave of electricity. The woods creaked, a thousand voices rising in worry, and you did… something. You showed the Thousand Singing Trees your bonded, and your life, and shared some magic, in exchange for something that was almost like a story and for the trees to tell you if someone comes near. They rustled in agreement, voices that were more magic and song than words rising between them in a symphony. Finally back in your body, you blinked and shoved whatever the fuck that was against the back of your mind. Because you are alone, and scared, and everything is _too quiet_ , and you almost feel hungry.

Your limbs twitched, and you raced from one side of the kitchen to the other. Where could they be? There wasn’t a single fucking skeleton in the house. You rose on two legs and paced, back bowed so your skull didn’t hit the ceiling. You gripped your head in panic, whimpering loud enough to wake the dead. Your only relief came from the two of them still being alive, but that absolutely _did not help_ when you know _full well_ there are things much worse than death, and your two skeletons were far enough away you couldn’t tell if their HP was high or low. 

Your headache flared as the Singing Woods brushed against you, magic pooling somewhere below you- the basement, fuck, isn’t that where you and your two skeletons came from?- and singing of a visitor. Yes, wow, thanks for the confirmation, fuck fuck fuck. 

You walked down the stairs, still on two legs, unwilling to risk the unfamiliar skeleton attacking you if they think you’re a vicious beast instead of intelligent. You straighten in the basement, because thank fuck for high ceilings, and move to a corner. Blocking the doorway is a bad idea, that might be seen as trapping them, and you don’t want to fight skeletons, alternate versions of Raven and Crowe or not. Why couldn’t they be here dealing with this? You gripped your skull as the headache built, echoing the buildup of magic centering on the weird box like a summoning circle. Holy fuck, is this a summoning circle? You file that away for later; Raven will love that his theory of summoning summons through dimensions is proven, but you will very quickly have an unknown skeleton in front of you, and you have no time for it.

You press a hand against the wall to steady yourself as the pain builds along with the magic, keeping your eyelights steady with willpower alone as you wait for the magical storm to pass. The magic sings on its crescendo, a loud, high note of victory as it succeeds pulling another skeleton into this reality.

With a burst of blue light and a flash, a short skeleton in white clothes collapses onto the ground and starts bleeding through their jacket and all over the floor.

_Fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Carrion's magic sensing ability works as any other sense- too much and it hurts. Because they're not born with it, they also don't have any natural defense against magic buidup, and the sheer lack of ambient magic in the Hallowed (My/This version of Horror!) Underground did not help whatsoever.
> 
> Also, Carrion is correct! The machine does indeed summon skeletons from other realities. However, the criteria is probably not what they're expecting, and this misconception will not be corrected until they meet this world's Frisk. Huh, I wonder what could be similar between Geno!Sans and HallowedTale. :) :)
> 
> So far, no one has guessed correctly Carrion's soul color, which tickles my funnybone! Here's a hint; it's a basis for everything she has accomplished. Any other soul color and she would not have kept her mind when they bonded, would not have changed her form when the situation changed, would not have had such an easy time disregarding her morals for her skeletons, would not be so physically strong when her form stabilized, and would not have the sensing abilities she does!
> 
> And, yes, that is Geno! Sans, or Genos as I call him. He's a Sans with just enough determination to reach the Death Screen on a genocide run, but not enough to reset himself. He was alone with Frisk in the Death Screen for a while, and only has about 1/9th of a soul. He also went insane and displayed a want to destroy the Determination ability of timelines entirely, which makes the next skeleton I wanted to bring in tricky. (I have a soft spot for the broken ones, if you couldn't tell,)
> 
> Hope you enjoy!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I'm so sorry, I fucked up.
> 
> 1) This was supposed to be a little fun thing, and I never expected the amount of attention a little one-shot could have gotten.  
> 2) in line with it being a one-shot, I did not have a plan for this until it suddenly grew a plot on me. I have to rework the other chapters, to make them longer and attach them to the plot.  
> 3) College has begun, and my free time has evaporated. I do not have the time to update every other day as I have done.  
> 4) I am not abandoning this story. The outline is set, I just need to work my way up to it while reworking the other chapters and smoothing things out.  
> 5) in line with this, I'm switching my update schedule to once, maybe twice, monthly.
> 
> Here's what I have written so far, as proof that this story is NOT ABANDONED.
> 
> EDIT JAN 24 2020: All chapters are updated, and here's the last bit of this chapter. All above is still in effect until college ends, but I got all my homework done early so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Your entire inner monologue was screaming in exclusively curse words as you bent over the bleeding figure. You wrack your brain for scraps of conversation, information,  _ anything  _ Crowe might have let slip about his magical affinity. Something vague slips into your mental fingers, about how to stabilize a wounded monster, a conversation exchanged without words when Crowe could no longer summon sparks. You gather your magic, curling over their body for easier magical access, and tilt your head to the side as a sharp bone soars through the air at your head.

"Get Crowe!" You yell to the frozen Raven, voice rough with disuse and deeper than you're used to. Your magic swirled under your skin as you used the contact to divert the flow towards him in a burst. The first thing to do when a monster is wounded is stabilize their soul. As someone who  _ can't draw out souls _ , you are doing what you can.

White shines through a cracked ribcage, fetid determination leaking out the holes in his marrow and your palm closes over the fading monster's soul before you have time to doubt.

Suddenly, it's like the world is a massive, roaring rapid, and you're the tether holding an escaping balloon to the ground. 

_ No. _ You grit your teeth, bracing against the tide as you magically roar  _ defiance.  _ This is a skeleton analogue of  _ Raven _ and you  _ will not bow. _

With knowledge born of your bond, you feel Crowe sit beside you and the flood of Green digging deep like roots against death's dark tide. You're no longer a stick with a string, but a mighty oak tucked deep into the planet's surface. Crowe's mental fingers detangle you from the scrap of soul, and for an instant you can feel the smile he's hiding behind your teeth before you're back in your body and are too busy collapsing into a sweaty puddle.

Stars above, you are  _ not  _ used to channeling that much magic. Under your skin, your soul almost burns. You take a moment to study the new Sans from your spot on the floor, seeing the thin, jagged lines of bone knit together as Crowe worked his magic on them. You can still feel the ghost of that sliver of soul imprinted on your palm, and you fight the urge to scratch at it.

_ A flash- of blade cutting across bone. A needle, a burning in your veins, and a fuzzy noose tied so tightly on your neck. _

You have no idea what that was about, but you have a feeling that the new Sans has been through some shit. You flex the hand that gripped the soul shard together, and turn your eyes away.

Now that you're not panicking and your bonded are both here, you turn to Raven with dead eyes.

"It's a summoning spell." You inform him, completely out of tact and without a single fuck to give. You've only been awake for like half an hour and reality is already too much for you at this point. It's too early to go back to sleep, too.

Raven twitches, surprised as he turns to look you in the sockets. "Mm?" He asked, confused.

"The machine." You waved at the box. "Mechanical summoning spell." You feel Raven's curiosity blossoms into interest and wonder, and just spend a moment staring up at the grey ceiling, siphoning magic from the remnants of the summoning spell, and just  _ existing _ . You, among other things, had forgotten that the surface world is entirely made up of unnecessary complications.

You wanted things to be simple, as usual ignoring that things are never simple, you were just uninformed before when things felt simple. You can feel Raven sorting through runes in his head, equations and statistics, and Crowe on your other side was running through monster biology. You understood very little of it, and plopped at the bottom of the stairwell to keep guard. It was a small way you could help.

Stars, it was too quiet. You hummed, something old and forgotten coming to mind as you rocked from side to side. The tune carried, even if you had to clear your throat a few times when the notes shifted. It felt like a lullaby, with properly haunting lyrics that you only felt the bare edges of.

Stars, you love the inside of your head (it is  _ yours _ , after all) but sometimes you wished you knew what made up the inside of it. You will  _ never  _ regret taking part of their wounds upon yourself, because that's what allowed them to heal, but sometimes, when you heard rumbling overhead and froze in fear, when you tasted something you couldn't name, you yearn for the understanding you used to have.

You summon a glowing tongue and run it over your teeth, a nervous tic you finally had the magic to indulge. You wondered where it came from.

Your voice cuts off as you feel Orange flicker into existence up the stairs, a loud growl bursting from your chest as he comes closer. Crowe and Raven are in the middle of delicate work, decoding the mechanical summoning machine and keeping the monster with barely a sliver of soul stable, and Orange is not allowed to interrupt that!

Your throat feels thick, almost bloated with anxiety, and you know that if you opened your mouth only animalistic sounds would spill out. But that doesn't mean you can't think  _ fuck off!!  _ as loud as you can at him, puffed up with your fur standing on end. Go away! Begone! Remove! Decease! 

The stairway door is open, so you see the moment he recognizes you standing on the stairs, teeth bared. He froze mid step, one hand on the handrail and another on the door handle as he stared into your empty sockets. Yes! Cease momentum!  _ Stop fucking moving! _

_ Fuck off!! _ You let out a short bark, and blinked at yourself. You had no idea you could do that, do it again! You barked at him, snarling and growling like a feral Pomeranian. Not allowed!! Begone!! 

Orange’s jaw stretched in a grin so fast it made your teeth ache. Clearly telegraphed, he reached behind his head to rub the back of his skull sheepishly, the complete opposite of what your senses were telling you. They were practically screaming that Orange’s usual lazy amber and alcohol had shifted to something more like ichor and molten gold.

“C’mon, pup.” Orange bared his teeth at you, disguised as a grin. “Jus’ wanna see what’s goin’ on, ‘at’s all.” He waved his hands in front of himself in a nonthreatening way, slouching into himself lazily. You are not fooled.

Behind him, another sans analogue -either Cyan or Blood, you can’t be sure without turning your focus from Orange- blips into existence, looks over Orange’s shoulder, and turns away. He can probably see that your bonded have got it covered, which Orange seems happy to blatantly  _ ignore. _

Can you bite him? You bark and growl again as he takes a step closer. You want to bite him.

Orange eyed you for a second, expression serious before he covered it with another grin, and his teeth parted as something about an annoying dog slipped through his throat. Fucking  _ what. _

You’re done. Rage rises through your soul as you snarl, back legs braced. You leap up at him, maw wide to close around him in a bite. You feel a sudden lurch, and suddenly you’re not there anymore.

You touch down on a dark grey surface, the world overlaid with lines and sides. An Encounter.

**Carrion (** _ fo _ _ b _ **n** _ s _ _ d _ _ al _ _ ) _

**LV: 20**

**ATTACK: 1 (** _ you are a weapon, and weapons do not weep _ **)**

**DEF: 3,000 (** _ what does forgiveness taste like? _ **)**

**“** **_Judge if you want. We’re all going to die. I intend to deserve it.”_ **

**_*CARRION BLOCKS YOUR WAY!_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aka Carrion actually gets to throw hands and the author buries herself into her hands.
> 
> Also all of those quotes are titles of poems and you should read them. they're nice and will come up more often as the plot finally gets into the swing of things.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aka author finally jumps on that fight scene, but Carrion still refuses to cooperate.  
> Also, Carrion made a mistake. Oops.

What the fucking _fuck_ this is not conclusive to removing distractions to Carrion and Raven..!!

...But this bitch called you an _annoying_ **_dog._ **

You snarled, unable to pace as you were frozen in place. You wanted to _bite him,_ not get into a fucking confrontation! You suck at magical confrontations!

Well, at least he can’t move either. You’re comforted until he raises his hand to grip his head in a confused position. “Wha’ in th’ world?” he muttered, and _yeah, my words exactly you rotting pudding-pop!_

Something in the distance _dong_ s, like a cloister bell, and you can’t help but feel the noise is familiar. Not just because of Doctor Who, but because--

...How do you know what doctor who is?

_(How can you remember?)_

\--you’ve heard it before, somehow, somewhere.

Something _fluctuates_ on the edges of your empty senses, out in the distance where everything feels like _nothing,_ to the beat of the cloister bell coming closer.

_Oh, fuck._ You think, already mentally spamming MERCY. Absolutely not. You are not going to do this again, do you hear me universe?!! You’re _not_ going to take another ride in the universe’s toilet bowl, no, absolutely not, no no no.

You’re eight inches from a full blown panic attack, eyelights blank as you go limp in the universe’s grasp and curl mentally into yourself, when a bone blasts through the void and shatters the Encounter Square. Thank you, gods, memes, and anime. You’ve saved me.

Immedietly you fuck off behind your savior, shaking as Celeste frowns disaprovingly at Orange. That’s it, Celeste is now a God Among Skeletons, right up there below Crowe and Raven.

“P-STRETCH!” Celeste is disappointed. The parts of you that are not high-strung from whatever the fuck that was are _delighted._ Orange looks like a kid caught bullying the dog; ashamed, but not understanding why. Not to imply you’re a dog, of course. To imply you are a dog would result in you biting the offender, much like you wanted to do to Orange less than a minute previously.

Has it only been a minute? Huh.

Celeste narrowed his eyes at the silent Orange and tapped his foot, the tension rising as Celeste waited for an explanation.

“B-BROTHER!” Orange’s voice rose almost as high as Celeste’s. “U-Um.” A bead of orange colored water (sweat?) slid down his face, and you could see his hands twisting in his sweatshirt pockets. Behind the cover of Celeste’s cape, you bobbed your head at him mockingly.

Staring deep into your eyes, Orange mumbled a long string of nonsense.

Celeste stomped. “SPEAK UP!” He demanded, in that cute squeaky high voice. You kept eye contact and, deliberately, bobbed your head some more tauntingly.

“She’s a human.” His words were more coherent now, even though he was gritting the white stick in between his teeth like he wanted it to turn to dust. If glares could kill, you'd be a pillar of salt right now.

Celeste blinked, his frustration halted as he glanced back at you. "... BROTHER. Are You Sure?" He studied your obviously monster body, from the tiny nubs on your head to your dark red, fluffy tail.

You wagged it and tilted your head at him, broadcasting innocence so heavily it probably came with its own heavy metal theme song. You barked, once, just to show you're listening.

"Yes." Orange deadpanned, not impressed with your little act. You bobbed your head at him some more, amused. Orange just got yelled at by a skeleton a little less than half his size, which has absolutely _nothing_ on your own full height, by the way, but it's still funny.

"...I'M CONFUSED." He admitted. Celeste had shifted so his back was to his brother, visibly taking his side instead of yours, and you pouted.

"'Nother Sans appeared in the basement, tried to die, and Crowe healed 'em. What's there to be confused about?" Raven replied, supporting Crowe's weight over his back. While that image was amusing, you trotted over to help anyways.

"WHAT?" "WHAT?" Celeste and Orange asked, in similar panicked, loud tones. Raven, helping to move Crowe to settle on your back as you braced, still, answered without thinking.

"Sans with a slash-" He mimicked the motion of a knife going over his ribs, and Orange flinched into himself. Celeste seemed almost fascinated. "- over his chest. Bleeding rotted determination." _Probably._ The thought wasn't shared aloud, but Determination smelled a _lot_ like iron and rotting cherries, and very few things shared that scent. Iron and rotting cherries, for example. Although how this Sans would have gotten blood and rotting cherry sauce on in his marrow is a mystery, Raven analogues eat _weird things._ Sauces, for example.

"Carrion stabilized him," something vibrated between their bond, and you tilted your head, confused. "I brought Crowe here, Crowe healed him." The fact he barely had 1/9th of a soul was private; between the patient and Crowe and **no one else**.

"What's there to question." Raven shrugged and pulled his hands into the pockets of the grey turtleneck sweater, forgetting that it had no pockets, and just crossed his arms, all casual. Something that wasn't quite anxiety and wasn't quite fear but had a _lot_ of worry vibrated against the bond, and you scrunched up your brows, pressing solid confusion and a touch of worry back. _Whatever I did, I have no idea, explain?_

There was silence for a few seconds as the anxiety dancing under the feeling Raven was sending grew and Celeste absorbed the explanation. Orange was still in shock, his mandable open and weird candy stick stuck to his fluffy shoe.

"...IS HE ALRIGHT?" Celeste asked with his hands pressed to his chest.

"He's fine. Crowe got to him in time." Raven answered, a hint of his anxiety coloring his voice. "And if you'll excuse me…" he grabbed you by the ear, ow ow _ow ow ow stop it._

It was only when you came to a complete stop that you realized it was more than just Crowe on your back, and you peeked around to see a hint of that light grey jacket.

Raven tugged your ear again, harsher, the emotion bubbling and vibrating with energy and meaning as he brought it to the forefront.

" _What the fuck did you think you were doing._ " He demanded, and you stared at him in confusion and hurt. Raven, done with your ignorance, forcefully tilted your bond … a way that isn't easily described in English.

There was another bond there, fragile and tiny and waving in the mental winds like a piece of silly string on a sail, and if mind-places had colors this one would be a _light greyish white._ The exact same color as the piggybacking skeleton's jacket.

_What the fuck._

You nearly fall straight over in shock, but manage to just collapse on your ass. Your very first action is to check and make sure the silly string bond actually exists. It does not revert into the hallucination you wish it was, and you dig deeper.

Your mental “palace” resembles more digital art than anything, with everything on different ‘layers’ but forming a sort of cohesive whole, even while being technically separated parts. Your bonded rest on the same level your incredibly deep emotions are, while still sort of holding framework to your information/social situations bank. This allows you to keep yourself together, while also sharing everything with them. The exact place they rest is the exact center of your chest; where both of those places (mentally) meet, and where your soul is. Because symbolism and narrative causality are your reading bread and butter, but also because bonding makes a magic pool and putting that where your emotions or information networks are is asking explosions to happen.

Down beneath your strong emotional core is where instinct hides, over where your reproductive organs would be if you had them, at your lower stomach. Those little things are represented by eyes, and when the ‘eyes’ open it means that whatever that instinct is, is being activated. The one that tells you if you’re being watched is directly over your spine and faces diagonally outward. The one that tells you you’re not alone in an empty room is to the left, where an ovary might once have been.

Magic sensing is sort of an instinct and sort of not; you don’t really  _ see  _ while using it, and the majority of what information you get is what your magic- your experiences, what you attribute to certain things, unconscious association- reflects back at you in the style of a reflection of  _ whatever _ filtered through what you’re familiar with. Echolocation, but complicated because magic isn’t just a mysterious energy you can manipulate; it’s literally an expression of  _ who you are. _

Magic sensing is how you knew something was coming, when the summon happened. Instinct is how you reacted when someone wearing something far too similar to Raven’s face came through with a mortal wound. Magic and your Affinity- which is incredibly a misleading name for the color expression of light reflected on your immortal soul- did the rest.

In hindsight, using your Affinity to ground yourself against death’s grasp while also using it to shore up the soul was an incredibly awful decision. Especially with your soul being the color it is.

You regret absolutely nothing.

Now more curious than worried, you prod very gently upon your new bond. It’s not a binding bond, like the one between Raven, Crowe, and you, which makes it, to your knowledge, new. It just sort of hangs there and allows you to get a very general read on the sleeping skeleton, like an incredibly shitty baby monitor for the ribcage-impaired.

Revisiting your feelings on the whole thing, you still regret none of your choice-making.

You impress this upon Raven, adding the baby monitor comment for extra flare.

Now Raven is the one confused. And you’re confused; why is he confused? Before you remember that Raven has never seen, heard, or known of a baby monitor, and that bonding is something usually done between married couples and expecting children. Oh.

You, much like he had, tilt him in the direction of the bond, and mentally open your arms wide to inspection.  _ Outside Observing/Monitor/Don’t mind. _ It’s like you’re the heartbeat monitor for a sick monster, and conventional social rules were never really your forte, anyways. You feel like this is because of some childhood Trauma, but anything before you fell is blurry at best and complete horseshit at worst, so. If he’s fine with it, and Crowe’s fine with it, and you’re fine with it, then is it really a problem? New Sans guy can’t talk right now, so until he wakes up he doesn’t get an opinion about it.

When he does, he can veto it at will. 

Crowe is also unconscious, from magic use instead of mortal wounds, and so you can’t exactly get his opinion, either, so maybe it’s time to shelve the decision until everyone is lucid and able to communicate. You push the information-and-emotions packet at Raven, and then decide that fuck it, if nothing else is going on you are going back to sleep. The sun is rising, the birds are chirping, and you are absolutely done. Wake you up when they’re awake and aware, or something. You feel wary down to the marrow of your bones, and you want to go back to _sleep_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> College is hell. I want to sleep for 400 years, the chatter fought me the ENTIRE WAY THROUGH so have this 1000 word thing instead of whatever I was planning. 99 snipers (fma fanfiction) is a gift sent from the gods (chad) to bless us poor mortals with anti-depression. As someone with asthma, I almost died reading it, and recommend it heavily, especially since it updates way fucking faster than this shitfest.  
> Have a question? Ask it in the comments and I'll answer. Enjoyed the chapter? Remember kudos + comments is the proven alchemical formula for More Updates ;)))
> 
> (im so fucking tired)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> God; Ik you've been absolutely fucked up got 3000 points in the stress market but let me slip you just this little bit of inspration  
> Me; ok but wheres the dream or the meeting or the?? drama ??  
> God, ignoring me; As a treat
> 
> I finished this college year with a 4.0, despite this fucking,,, disease  
> anyways, this will be expanded i just didn't want to leave you guys without SOME kind of update
> 
> remember your kudos and comments are what keep this flaming trashfire alive!! peace out!!  
> (im bout to sleep for 400 years)

_A scream. A flash. Hundreds of deaths, of_ murders, _terrible and aching and infinite, every time you close your eyes. A red scarf. You can't seem to pull it off. Something always stays your hand. Grief, enough to drown a God._

There seems to be a pattern going on here. The pattern is either you fall asleep and god decides to make you regret that decision, or your subconscious has decided that punishing you for your sins is a passtime worth getting behind.

You would like to bite your subconscious. And god.

_Thanks so much for those dreams_ , You snarl sarcastically, _I totally wanted to be_ **_blindsided_ ** _by his fanatical devotion to his brother and his decision that murdering everything would solve it._ In context, the decision makes sense, but out of context, you’re kind of stuck eyeballing your dream-self sideways. Dimensions, timelines, whatever- they split off and multiply like a strange amalgam of rabbits and amoebas, changing little things and big things and twisting into themselves and proving the point that reality is an interconnected series of subjective viewpoints. Killing all of them would take eternities, as the ones you’ve murdered resurrect with stranger internals, split off and consume each other and collapse as their nexus’s and force multipliers die off and collapse for no real reason. 

Beyond that? Just because one timeline went wrong doesn't mean all of them will. And just because something in a timeline went wrong doesn’t mean murdering everyone will fix everything. There are breadmakers, factory workers, and people who had nothing to do with the constant murders of your brother who woke up one day ass deep into the void because a skeleton turned insane from the constant murder of his support has brother issues now. 

Okay, it’s understandable, but there _has_ to be a point where you stop and say “ah yes, 14 trillion people, this is enough murder.” like???

Maybe it’s just you, but maybe murdering entire timelines for the fault of one dumb fuck seems morally unsound. And the person who does it, mentally unsound.

Solution; kill the one at fault instead. And keep killing them until they stop. Problem solved. If you don’t want to get murdered, don’t murder someone. Especially like _that._ Ouch.

Your head hurts and you’re miffed. You stretch a little, feel Crowe in the kitchen and Raven with some other skeletons, and decide to place yourself in the middle of whatever he’s doing and look miserable in search of pats. Maybe if you look sad enough they’ll even give you _snacks_.

This is a good plan; you go downstairs.

Raven is sitting on a couch next to the skeleton in the grey sweatshirt in a group with the rest of his analogues, and they all seem to be discussing the science of whatever keeps dragging them all into this world. Whatever; you're confident in Raven's ability to power through a problem until it's solved, and it's not like you're going _back_ so learning what pulls other skeletons in is a fun puzzle for Raven.

Not that he'd think of it that way; monster puzzles are completely different to human puzzles. Monster puzzles are full of spikes (and more recently; death) and are a sort of growing up thing where you complete all the puzzles and then make your own to add to the puzzle-pile.

It doesn't make much sense to you, but you can also see how daring children and traps for possible following Intruders can mix together to make a cultural standpoint. And _your_ traps are pretty cool, if you say so yourself!

You debate flopping down on laps or on feet, and decide feet when the grey string pulses, uncomfortable.

You look up the stairs, and, wearing his oversized grey hoodie, is the ash-colored Raven, gripping the fabric of his hoodie over his chest. His face is curiously blank, and you can feel his cautious awe as he prods at his soul-shard, which is already starting to heal.

You trot up to him. Now that he's awake, you can properly feel him, and he feels... not _sad_ , but something on the edges of it. Regretful, almost, except mixed with accepting? He feels like _you._ Like waking up and realizing that no matter what you do, you'll never be accepted for what you did to survive, like how you'll never be able to tell anyone but your bonded how iron marks your favorite foods because for so long it was the only food you had.

He feels like waking up, and seeing the _sun_ for the first time.

"Hello." You speak aloud, soft and rough. He doesn't startle, but it's obvious he wasn't paying attention to you before. "M' names Carrion. What're you called?" You scratch your nose, keeping one eye on him and waiting politely.

He opens his mouth- sharp teeth, like Raven's and unlike all the other analogues- and hesitates. He looks down at his hoodie, with the obvious red thread repairing the massive slash, and pulls up his scarf.

"Call me Gray." He says. His grin is self-depricating enough to melt acid. "Dust Gray."

That has... Connotations. "Imma call you Ash Gray if that's alright?" Because whatever that backstory is, the other skeletons, so naive, would never be able to accept it. Dust implies dead monsters, and even if he's blaming himself for something someone else did that's still enough to raise hackles. 

You don't want to think about why you're helping this skeleton. How he reminds you so much of Raven, before the Feast. Before the Fall. He's... Jaded but innocent, somehow. And instead of the casual disdain innocence inspires in you from other skeletons, this one seems to have earned a little respect.

"That's fine." His grin is a little dry, and you mull it over for a second before turning to the side and offering him your back.

"Want a ride? Don't want you 't pull your stitches, after all." Haha, puns. His grin widened as he looked over you, and then over at the other skeletons, and then over his chest.

"If you don't mind." And his grin is politely bashful, false as your tongue, and he is _charming._ You don't regret it, even as your fur stands on end and his inexperience causes him to tug uncomfortably at your fur.

It's still not sad when you make it to the couch and he gets off, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah yes dream visions my favorite method of smacking Carrion upside the head
> 
> Edit May 22 2020; Child: I dare you to go through the traps! 
> 
> Other Child: You Too!
> 
> (Time passes)
> 
> Next generation:  
> Parents: I went through the traps at your age.  
> Child: huh I guess I should too.
> 
> Next generation:  
> Child: am I in trouble?  
> Adult: not at all! Everyone goes through the traps  
> Child: (that's too boring. I should make my own!)
> 
> Ect.
> 
> God; you can finish ONE sentence  
> Me: wow thanks I hate it
> 
> Edit Sep 30 2020   
> Hi my friends, I started work and college and it kicked my ass. Carrion had to be shoved to the back burner as I struggled through that garbage. This is a formal invitation, to God, to fight me in my backyard at 5 tomorrow, bc I'm WRITING this shit and you can't stop me so :p


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is dedicated to Void_Of_Feeling who reminded me it existed, lol.  
> to be fair though work is kicking my ass  
> remember the alchemical formula for more updates!!

They're going through the whole spiel, alternate universes, as you flop over your bondeds' laps and claim this land under order of Cat Law. You're not a cat but it totally applies. Crowe, actually here for the explanation this time, is content running his fingers through your fur as Raven meditates beneath your bulk, fake-snoring softly.

Ash twitches when they get to the differences between their universes, grin turning brittle at the edges. Crowe catches his eye from where Ash is trapped by your tail, and speaks softly, eyes dark and broadcasting  _ Hold-your-tongue _ .

"We had two humans in ours, one who breezed through the Underground in a single day, and another that stayed in the Ruins for a while." Crowe stroked your side abscently, and you're  _ purring  _ this feels so nice, you're so warm and happy it burbles beneath your skin. Nothing can ruin this.

"By the end, the King and Queen were dead, the human souls were gone; there was barely any Hope." Crowe is being depressing but that can't stop your happiness, because you're passed that point now and Nothing Could Ever Bring You Back.

"What happened to the other human?" Orange asks, curious. 

"What?" Crowe blinks his eye lights at Orange, surprised to be interrupted. 

"The Human that stayed in the Ruins. What happened to them?" Orange asked, innocently.

The bond goes into hyperdrive. Should they reveal she's a human or not? What's something they can say that isn't a lie but will imply the human in the Ruins left or died, instead of moved in with them? Should they reveal she stayed with them? What can they hide and what can they reveal without upsetting the status quo? They don't know what the other skeletons know or don't- is it common for humans to change as she did? Will that information reveal their dietary needs of that time?

"Everyone in the Ruins was dead, except for them." Crowe stated clearly. "They weren't there at the time; they were in Snowdin." He doesn't mince words. If she was actually in the Ruins at that time she would have been dead, but instead she was sleeping at their house, not yet changed into what she is now. 

"What happened to them?" Orange asked again, like the answer was something profound and strange. To be fair, it  _ was _ , no one could have predicted what ended up happening, but the story Crowe implied with his words made the answer easy.

"They moved in with us." Crowe stated and you cringed through the bond so hard Raven was knocked out of meditation.  _ Crowe _ that's not- you're supposed to say something about how all the humans were gathered up and killed! Not! That!

You scratch the nubs on your skull with his ribcage, whining  _ Crooooww  _ through your bond, jittery with the drop in anxiety.

"Moved in with you? What, like the furball?" Blood asked, and Crowe gave him a  _ look.  _

"Exactly." Crowe confirmed, patting you like he didn't just reveal your humanity to a bunch of naive idiots with chronic black-and-white mentality.

"Frisk?" Orange asks, entire focus on you. You squint at him, confused. Bitch do I  _ look _ like? Not that you know what Frisk looked like; that kid was in and out in a  _ day _ . 

The other skeletons eye you like they're trying to pick out fleas in your fur with their eyes. You are thankfully flea-free but what the heck. Stop staring at me.

"No." Crowe looks at Orange like he's waiting for the sweatshirted skeleton to stop being deliberately stupid, completely ignoring Blood's question. "Frisk killed the King, the entirety of the Ruins, the Queen, stole the human souls, and left."

Orange squints at you like you're a puzzle piece refusing to fit in the perfectly matched spot he's trying to place you in. "Chara?" He asks, and who in the fuck? That name sounds familiar, in a 'oh you know that guy?' kind of way, the familiarity of someone mentioning someone else who you used to share space with but didn't know. 

"Heir Chara died. Years ago." Crowe matches your look at the surrounding skeletons, adding a sprinkle of  _ are you crazy _ ? Heir Chara? Like Prince Azriel? "Are they alive, in your worlds?"

Every skeleton except Ash makes the exact same 'ehh, kinda' face. It's eerie. Also what the fuck, how can someone be kind of dead? 

"Mostly. Are you sure that's not Chara?" Orange points straight at you, tilting his head to the side.

Crowe looks out the window instead of answering to Orange's face. "When the Royal Guard Captain killed the other humans, she didn't stop there." He reached back with his lower left arm, palming the heavily scarred disk that was the break in his back. It looked more like a needle spine or a spike than anything that should be a part of an actual spine.

"She… wounded us." He dances around that trigger like a professional ballerina. "Permanently." He traced the scar around Raven's socket, not quite touching.

You want to laugh. She did, in more ways than just that. Fuck, you  _ hate  _ her. It's the irrational kind of hate that's made up of about 90% internal screaming, but you hate her. She fucked up Crowd's back. She  _ ruined Raven's  _ **_eye_ ** . She wasted three perfectly good human souls and  _ dusted right on top of their broken, child bodies _ , and you  **hate her** .

"We can't remember who Carrion was, before." Crowe finishes, interrupting your spiral. 

"Not Chara." You force through clenched teeth, angry down to your bones at the entire situation. You didn't want to reveal your human past, your sentience, because the greatest power comes in information and it's those on the lowest rung that can gain the most power that way, but fuck. These- not even skeletons, these are  _ assholes-  _ who have never actually challenged a single moral in their lives, who sit on their high horse unaware it's made of lies, will not even let you have that. But fine; that's fine. You will not be called  _ that _ , a name of a child you only half-remember, flashes of dark brown hair and unusually red eyes. Chara has never been your name; that name was earned from ages of being in the same spaces.

You are Carrion.

"Carrion." You insist, hiding your head in the hollow of Crowe's stomach. 

"Not all of us are pretty-perfect, huh." Ash muttered, almost fond as he patted your legs. He was so quiet it was only your focus that allowed you to hear it, and you  _ wanted to laugh _ .

Crowe sighed. "After that, Raven fought the Captain, she died, and we were starving, barely surviving on what we could forage from the forests." He paused. "We were hibernating, Carrion got us up for some food, and then we were here."

There. Clean and succinct.

"WAIT. RAVEN  _ KILLED UNDYNE _ ?" Celeste squeaked, hands over his face where his tears made tracks.

You  _ growled _ . "She. Killed.  _ Children. _ " They didn't look like they understood. "Last humans underground? Were children. Youngest  _ three years old _ .  _ Baby _ . Murdered." You saw them in your mind's eye, the four floating souls over the twisted, bruised, bloody mass that used to be four innocent  _ children _ . You couldn't turn back time and make them alive again; the only dignity you could give them was using their corpses to keep others  _ alive _ .

Kindness, Patience, Kindness, Justice. They were  _ so young _ .

"Child-killer. Death; only mercy." You snarled, glaring at the flash of blue scales in your mind's eye. 

"Wait- but, you're human, too. Why didn't they use your soul to break the barrier? Or- their souls?" Orange looked actually confused instead of the blank facade of before, and you are  _ angry _ .

Crowe- beautiful, kind Crowe, so full of love-  _ snarled _ , black and protective as the moon as he leaned over you protectively, Raven jolting out of meditation on his side.

"King. Dead. Queen. Dead. Captain. Dead." You explained to these  _ buffoons,  _ not even touching the implication that you should have used children’s souls to break an already broken barrier. " _ No alive Boss Monster _ ." 

You would have if you could, if it was an option. Just to get Raven and Crowe out, you would have died with no regrets. But all the Boss Monsters were  _ dead _ at the point you maybe could have. The King and Queen died, the Captain died, and maybe the Royal scientist could have helped if they didn't lock the Lab down right afterwards, but they did, and took Metaton with them. Grillby went out as soon as he knew the King did, and Gerson was killed  _ by the Captain's own hand _ . 

When you could it wasn't an option anymore; your bond had very firmly settled when the Captain decided to go insane, and your bonded would have  _ shredded  _ any alive boss monster who tried to touch your soul without permission.

"You mean-?" Blood seemed to choke on his own words. "You're not a Boss Monster?" He directed his words at Raven.

"No." Raven drew out the syllable mockingly. "I'm Summoning-class." He said 'summoning-class' in the skeleton language you lovingly called Bonesign. All the other skeletons- except Ash, who looked suddenly fond- flinched back like Raven has just manifested a live cockatrice in the middle of the room.

"You speak?" Ash asked in the same language, wistful.

"Yes. It's our subspecies' native language. What else would I speak? Scale-speech?" Raven mocked the serpent-tongue with a twist of his hands, not unkindly. 

“Besides, why would either of us want to kill Carrion just to take her soul?” Crowe asked, eyeing Orange like he was a raw corpse they hadn’t gotten to eating yet.

“To  _ escape. _ ” Orange enunciated, like Crowe was the one being deliberately dense. You snorted. Why would you want to leave?

“Why would we want to leave?” Crowe echoed your thought aloud.

“Okay. Hold on.” Cyan held up a hand like he could stop the infinite seething cesspool of bullshit spewing from everyone else’s mouths. “You’re not a boss monster. You speak in hands.” Which is a weird way of referring to Bonesign, but accurate. “Do you know anyone named Gaster?” The name was whispered like saying it too loud would summon a demon or something. 

Raven frowned. “Our old roommate? Yeah.” He gave Raven his first summons and then left them to their own devices, too busy building something as the Head Scientist to pay them any attention. “He died.” Because that might not be blatantly obvious.

“Roommate?” Blood looked like he wished he could picture a world where that worked. 

“Yeah.” Raven stated evenly, eyeing Blood like a puzzle that was complete but withholding its prizes. “Experimenting with determination or something? He melted.” Like everyone else who ever experimented with determination, he didn’t say.

“What about your father?” Cyan asked, and Raven shut down.

“Died. In the war.” He left it at that. Orange was on his phone, and why did that just put a shiver down your spine?

“How about you?” Crowe blatantly changed the subject, passing the scrutiny-ball to Ash.

Ash hummed, something dangerous lurking behind the curves in his smile. “Well, after an especially bad reset,” Reset? The fuck? “I went to Alphys. She injected me with Determination.”  _ Qqqhhwhat the fuck- _ “Good news! It worked. Bad news? It  _ worked. _ I was there, in the void, staring the reset button in the face, but I couldn’t touch it.” He touched the red scarf again and-fuck. You’ve seen him before, haven’t you? You can’t remember where but it’s so familiar it aches. “I had to watch.” He says, and you pat him with your tail.

I had to watch, he says. Bitch me too, you want to say. 

“Reset?” Raven asks, confused. 

“ _ How are you not melted _ ?” Crowe demanded, like his patient was about to turn into melted butter at any moment.

“The- Reset? You guys never had a Reset?” Ash looks offended, like not experiencing a reset is some kind of crime. “Nothing?”

The rest of the skeletons look almost pitying, except for Orange, who looks like he just figured out who the demon in the room is, and it’s you.

“Didn’t have them, or don’t remember?” He asks, and his phone screen cracks in his hands as he clenches them. The rest of the skeletons harden at that, staring at you like you’re the scum between their toes, the air in their joints, the wasps in their figs. Even Ash looks like you just ate their puppy.

You’re incredibly fucking confused, and look it. 

Cyan’s grin is brittle and sharp as he lifts up a hand. “One way to find out.”

  
And then he  _ tears your soul out of your chest. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone's interested Gerson died defending the first Kindness soul. His name was Tinny and he was mute. Grillby took in the Justice soul, whose name was Sally and she loved Star Wars. The Bunny Family had the other Kindness soul, her name was Lily, and the last Patience soul was in the care of the Ice Wolf, and she loved snow. Her name was Hope.  
> If I missed any boss monsters tell me it's been like 3 years since i last played and im too lazy to look it up.  
> the entire conversation went off of the rails. Crowe was supposed to go with the flow and keep hiding all the shit, except he was in the other room when the explanation went by, so he doesn't have the context to curve around misconceptions.  
> Ash was in the void and thus immune to gaster-shenanigans; Gaster was his father and they bonded in the void.  
> if you're too lazy to look in the comments, it's my headcannon that Judge abilities is how any of the skeletons can remember resets; because they can read the deepest sins you do, Frisk kills a lot of the underground, thus he can see that and remember it.  
> Resets make past memories fuzzy because they make what you accomplished yesterday seem like a dream.  
> HallowedTale has no resets. The barrier in HallowedTale is basically flimsy rags held together with spite. how do you expect to move an entire planet back in time, instead of just a smallish monster settlement or two? you can't. its impossible.  
> Orange was texting his Chara/Frisk, btw, asking them to get over here and see this weird analogue of theirs.  
> ask me questions in the comments dammit how else is my muse supposed to get a second wind?!  
> a moment of silence for HallowedTale's three dumb asses. their ruse lasted this long.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The results of my fistfight with god. Yes I wrote and posted the last chapter not even 12 hours ago, shut up. It's all these kudos and comments, that's all.  
> Dedicated to SorryForTheArson, who inspired me to keep going after my muse got fed up with my bullshit.

You are sixteen years old, and the world has fallen apart. Your last hope in a sea of steaming shit died, and you can’t be bitter about it because they managed to save someone else before they left. Dad, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll be better than you ever were.

(There’s a hole in your chest, and you don’t think this one will ever heal.)

You are seventeen years old and entirely, achingly, done. It’s one stray shot too many, one cheap shot too many, and you’re _done_. You’ve always loved horror stories and myths; let’s see if the Hungry Cavern lives up to its tales. 

(You beg Death for three days and three nights, knees bloodied and bruised where you’ve prayed for an answer, a hope, anything just to keep your broken heart from bleeding.)

You are eighteen years old and everything is wonderful. Your new mom is calm and so, so sweet, you can’t regret anything. Not even your father's death.

(She’s kind. Too kind. You don’t deserve her.)

You are nineteen years old and there is someone on the other side of the door. You don’t know who they are, but you know one thing. They make funny jokes. You managed to make six ice puns in a row before you both collapsed into laughter.

(It doesn’t ache with him there. You wonder what he looks like. You wonder if it matters.)

You are twenty and something is wrong. Mom is pushing you past the doorway into the snow, and shutting it behind you. You promise to be safe, even though you know it’s a lie. You’ll never see her again, and your tear tracks freeze to your face. You can’t feel them; the only thing you feel is numb.

(One last soul, they cry. You’re not who they’re looking for, but the people in the Ruins don’t care. Mom, forgive me. You brush dust off of your hands and press your hand to your bleeding side, tears sliding down frostbite scarred tracks.)

You meet the man on the other side of the door. He’s charming, and something about this strikes you as ironic. You can’t stop smiling. You wonder if you ever will. His brother is just as great, which seems like a hyperbole but isn’t. You all just… click.

(You haven’t had a nightmare in so long, you almost can’t remember what it feels like. You’re safe. You burst into happy tears, something blooming beneath your ribcage. This is what love feels like.)

Six months seems like a long time, but in motion it’s a series of moments, one to the other. Sly flirting, careful talking, late-night conversations that end up with you sprawled over them, bruises where their bones pressed a bit too hard to soft skin. It’s not all happy, but none of it is painful. 

(You don’t have shouting fights, but careful debates. They poke holes in your arguments and agree with them at the same time, and you’ve never had this much fun before. You’ve never told anyone about your cousin before. Beneath their eyes, the phantom impression of his hands fades like smoke, and you love them so much you’re bursting with it.)

You already know them to the depths of your heart. What difference will knowing them to the depths of your soul make?

(The difference is uncanny. How had you lived, before, unable to see without your eyes like this? You can taste their magic from across the room, and it feels like _harmony._ ) 

You’re not asleep anymore, because you know something is Wrong.

(People are dying at the edges of your senses, and you know that is _wrong_ but can’t bring yourself to do anything about it. You brush it off; this is obviously a nightmare, you think, and a voice in the back of your skull snarls _she abandoned me first_.)

The King and Queen are dead. The Ruins are empty. Snowdin is earning up to its name; the storm outside is so heavy it knocked out the electricity. Your bonded are so scared; you make them a pillow fort and cuddle up to them. They're confused at first, but when they realise you produce heat they're so _relieved_. You couldn't remove them with a crowbar.

(How many days were like this before you showed up? They lived with this fear for so long it's almost engraved into their bones.)

Flashes. Pain, shards of thoughts. _Where did the magic go?_ And _I hope this hurts_ and, more clearly, **_You won't take the sky from me!_**

It's not the only way, but it's the only option you can stomach. You haven't had any water in almost three days. Your lips still taste like tears when you take the tiny arm (so small, so tiny) and bite down. 

(You're not Determination. You can't take the rules of reality over your knees and crack them in half. You're Integrity. The rules you can change are much smaller than that. You can't go back in time, can't save them from dying in the first place. But you can keep those that live alive. And in that, maybe you can save the future.)

You don't remember how old you are, and you ache.

You stopped feeling thirsty six days ago. You haven't stopped feeling hungry. Your stomach is concave; you'd liken yourself to a holocaust survivor if you could remember what that was. When was the last time you ate? You can't remember; days blend together and between sleep and the constant pain you can't tell what's hunger and what's just regular pain.

Your thighs are wrong. They look like someone stretched a human thigh way too far out. You don't look human anymore; more like a fasimile concocted by Cthulhu. 

Are you screaming? You can't tell anymore. You can't feel your body, as anything more than a constant high buzz of pain.

There's iron on your lips. Is it yours or theirs? You can't tell. 

(You have always been contrite in your pain. You are many things, but naturally nice is not one of them. Your kindness is the kind forced through bloodstained teeth, earned with scraped knees and pain. Your bonded are still there, though; they debate your vitriolic words with you, distracting you from the pain with arguments about semantics, and you.. you loved them, but not like this. This feels like someone scooped out every negative thought in your head and filled it with them. This feels like being comfortable showing your back to them in a room, trusting them to keep you safe. You're safe with them, not just the nicer parts you show the world, but even the most hateful parts of yourself are safe with them.)

You don't care how old you are, and you're starving.

There are no more squirrels or deer in the forests over by Snowdin. Most trees are dead from lack of bark. There's a bunny monster at your door. You can't remember her name, but she collapsed outside your doorway and begged to have a use, any use, and your bondeds' bones are so brittle, and you know what needs to be done.

The dust is barely a handful. She dies with a smile. That doesn't stop you from crying a little more inside as you suck it into your teeth, crunching on the sandy magic.

(You will dig out a grave behind the house every time this happens, for every corpse you kill with your own two hands, for every monster that dusts in front of you. Eventually, when you are too tired and hungry, you will leave stones instead. When you can't move anymore, can't do anything but sleep, you will forget them.)

_Dong_. A cloister bell rings, far too close. You flinch instinctively, curling your too-vulnerable Heart back into your chest where it belongs.

You are today years old, and you're like a volcano on the edge of eruption, like the moment before Vesuvius burst, the second before a bomb explodes, an instant where everything is calm and still.

You blink and in an instant take in the expressions of all the skeletons around you. Raven and Crowe are off of the couch- you're on the floor now, of course you are- and crouched over you protectively. Ash looks haunted, Blood looks hunted, Wine could be a two dimensional character with how hard he's dissociating, Cyan looks like he just solved the puzzle and his prize was a bear trap, and Orange looks like he just solved the bear trap and his prize was a puzzle.

That was violating, and you feel peeled raw, like someone tore off parts of your skin with their fingernails. It's not even thought, or instinct; You go straight for the throat.

Cyan tore out your heart but Orange instigated the whole mess; he looks delightfully panicked as you snap teeth around empty air where his neck should be. Crowe is right behind you, and when you turn Orange is captured between his four arms.

"That." He enunciates clearly, straightening so that his spine let's out a series of cracks. "Was _rude_."

You're not the only one who is snarling; Raven's heavy bass vibrates the air around him with how deep it is. 

"You." Cyan is the first to speak. "Bonded?" He gestures to you and. There are so many insults in those two words you want to applaud. Gently. With your teeth. Around his neck.

Crowe ignores the blatant insult. "Why did you feel it necessary to touch my mate's soul _without permission_?" He asks, so polite one could feel the knife digging into their collective shoulderblades. 

"Well I thought- we thought- that if you reset and-" Orange babbles but you're not listening. You rise up on two feet, back hunched, and stare the skeleton down, eye socket to eye socket.

"If you ever do that again." You say, "I will use your dust to clean my teeth." There. Succinct and polite as you can be.

You are. So done. What is that, trees? You want me to visit? Great. I'm feeling good. Let's fucking go. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> None of the characters like to cooperate. I try to lead it one way and they nope it in a different direction.  
> This chapter is also dedicated to my sister, who is an actual angel.
> 
> Wine is Fell!Papyrus, Cyan is OG! Sans, Orange is Swap!Papyrus, Celeste is Swap!Sans, Blood is Fell!Sans, the swapfells/fellswaps are not here yet lol.


	11. Chapter 11

The woods are massive, dark, and deep. 

They're also dead asleep. Which is great; that conversation was so deeply out of control walking around the forest just sounds heavenly. Orange is on the ground when you drop back down on all fours, and Crowe molds himself to your back like he was made for it. His anger is tightly contained, clenched in a fist around his sternum, and you relate. Deeply, deeply relate.

Raven's anger, on the other hand, is the pressing anger of a scheme thwarted, and you trust that he can take care of himself; he's not yet angry enough to lash out like you and Crowe are.

You bite the door open, and speed into a run, dodging passing trees and feeling your muscles burn and ache. When it gets to be too much, you drop the pace, panting. There's dirt in your fur and you flop to the ground and roll against it, bitter but not pissed enough to go straight to murder anymore. 

Crowe slides off your back, emotions seething. You watch as he flexes, bones rattling as he gathers his anger, and lashes out. The trees don't wake as he punches a hole straight through the empty hollow, splinters flying. 

He sighed through his nose, still burning but embers, now, and sat on the ground next to you, in the circle of your stomach. He leaned against your chest, and you spent a moment together, his head in his topmost hands and you, just staring up at the sky. Taking a moment to breathe and enjoy the fresh air on your fur, enjoy the ground beneath your body.

“Why don’t they just understand?” Crowe asked the area around you both, muffled between his fingers.

“Because they’ve never actually thought about their assumptions critically in their life.” You answer anyways. “They just have a pile of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and they don’t think about it because it’s obvious to them, not realizing reality is not like that at all, that it’s a lot more complicated than black and white.” You nudge him gently. 

Those skeletons just tore out your soul on a suspicion, revealed everything you felt guilty about in your  _ life  _ on a whim, and you… can remember it. Your father’s name was Ranger. Your mother was a goat monster named Toriel. You were adopted by both of them because your parents were… unconsciously cruel. Ranger died saving someone, and you went back to your parents, and then left. 

You don’t remember how you came to be underground, but you remember praying for something, anything. Maybe something answered. 

You know who your mother was, why you came to Snowdin- the other Ruins monsters wanted your soul but you’re Integrity and not Determination so she left you to her friend on the other side of the doors and you loved and  _ hated  _ her for that- you remember your  _ first date. _ It was to Grillby’s, and you had so much fun making stupid puns with  _ Sans _ that you didn’t realize you were petting one of the dogs until his head broke through the roof. You felt  _ so bad  _ about that.

Not as bad as  _ Grillby _ though; those ice puns were absolutely  _ awful _ . 

You remember the late-night conversations, staring up from Sans’s too-big bed up at the glow-in-the-dark stars, Papyrus’s usually buoyant voice quiet and reverent as you traced your bones with his hands, naming every single one out of his anatomy book. You remember  _ placing  _ those same stars under Sans’ star-shaped eyelights, matching them to the laminated astrology paper you had in your notebook. Myths and legends were your bread and butter, and you knew them  _ all _ . It kind of… devolved before long, though, because you are a hopeless double demi and your sex drive has  _ opinions _ , and you felt kind of guilty you couldn’t get pregnant. You wondered what they’d be like as fathers.

You remember giving his rarely-used race car bed to the bunny families for their newest child, because Sans’ bed was huge enough to fit the three of you and you wouldn’t be sleeping without each other  _ anyways.  _ You remember… The snowstorm. The  _ children. _ Gods, you pray they find safe harbor wherever their souls sleep. You hope they forgive you for what you did. What you didn’t have to do but did anyways, because you are a selfish being at heart and the other sides of your soul are your whole  _ world _ . 

You would do some truly terrible things to keep them safe, you know, much less  _ alive. _ You have _ done _ some incredibly awful things for this reason _. _

It’s still jagged and blurry; you can’t remember your name, or your original gender, or anything like that, but you can remember a little more now.

And you remember this much because these versions of  _ your _ Raven decided to do one of the  _ worst sins  _ you can think of, and Read your soul  _ without consent _ . You feel violated and bare, stripped of all your protective walls, and you want to lash out and build them up again with spikes and dust so that no one will  _ ever touch them again. _

You hope Raven is having fun raking strips off of them with his teeth. You can feel the vicious satisfaction he’s practically yodeling from here. 

Crowe is waiting. “I don't forgive them. I-“ You begin, before the trees wake.

_ Intruder! _ They warn, and your senses are already racing through the woods, guided by the trees.

“Someone’s coming.” You tell Crowe, through the veil, as your bonded jolt with your sudden focus.

You straighten your body through the distance, eyeing the Souls that are very quickly approaching the house. Two Humans, and two vaguely familiar but also really not monsters, plus a Papyrus. The monsters are familiar in the uncanny valley way that the other Papyri are familiar, so you think they might be analogues of monsters you knew, but one of the humans is the same uncanny familiar. You don't know  _ any  _ humans other than the children that died, and you really hope it isn't one of them, but just in case you brace yourself and ask Crowe to hop on.

"Multiple someones." You warn belatedly. Maybe he could get that restless angry energy out defending you physically. You will probably need it, being not really human anymore and magically being a complete pussy. 

You push yourself this time, magic enhancing the power of your already magical limbs to the point you practically fly back to the house. Crowe slides off your back, up the stairs and through the door, interrupting a skeleton mid-word, as you position yourself along the treeline, still not quite inside your body.

This feels almost like a hunt. A  _ proper _ hunt, you correct, needing the destination as Raven prods you and you connect.

_ Growling metal-shell golem. _ You report to Raven as you eye the strange, soul-less beast coming up the road to the house.

_ Metal carriage. _ Raven sent back, seeming just as confused with his thoughts as you.  _ Gray/Blue-annoying says is brother. _

_ Is not. _ You refuted.  _ Human-human stranger-stranger-stranger + maybe/brother.  _

They opened the carriage doors and stepped out, and -

_ Mom and Yellow Dinosaur and probably-Brother and small child and- _

_ Blue scales. _ You don't think. You detach yourself from your emotions and very carefully do not look at  _ redhair-bluescales _ . 

You… glitch. For an instant, you're back underground, at that clearing, mud squishing between your toes and smearing blood up your legs. You can see the corpses and the fading souls, can hear the buzz in your ears as  _ that Captain _ breaks  _ your Crowe _ 's spine,  _ your Raven _ 's eye, and four  _ innocent children _ over her knee. You’re grateful, for a moment, that you feel not even an  _ atom _ of guilt for her death, that those skeletons can spoil the memory of her dusting with their unworthy eyes. 

**_Murderer_ ** _. _ You warn, because your bonded don’t deserve to have that thrown in their faces without warning. You burst ahead of the unfamiliar group, almost a blur as you sprint through the door and curl around Raven and Crowe, trying to bury them in your massive bulk. You feel… bloated, or faded, like a washed out oil painting puzzle piece someone is trying to stick in the wrong spot, the wrong spot being your body. The feeling of not quite being there in your skin is a familiar one, and you treasure it right now as you try not to shatter into itty-bitty pieces across the lovely white tile. 

You want to fight her. Want to banish the remnant formed of her hated  _ everything, _ and keep your worst memories locked down tight where they belong. 

You don’t want to fight her. She’s not the person you thought you knew, never made the same choices because she never had to. She isn’t Royal Captain Undyne. But she could be, and you bury your fear with anger (bury your anger with fear) because it’s easier to run than to fight and you don’t- do- want to fight.

You grab your bonded and bolt for your room, sliding around them like a snake with fur as you anxiously remind yourself you’re not  _ there, _ not trapped in a place that kept killing you by the inches. You’re all  _ better _ now.

(but are you?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me; bases some of my world building on Kingdom Hearts
> 
> Also me; forgets the basic rules of souls/hearts in Kingdom Hearts
> 
> Me, writing this: you can, as a small child, walk from one end of the Underground to the other in like, six hours maybe. There is no real need for cars, but carriages to carry heavy loads? They have to have roads for a reason. 
> 
> Carrion: *tries to astral project to escape confrontation*
> 
> Me; bitch me too the fuck


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's 12 am and my muse won't let me continue so here have this world building exposition crap  
> also ash gets a cameo bc he's Important

Raven is petting you. You bask in the attention as he carefully braids sections of fur, radiating focused attention and distant, blistering rage. All of your bonded are right here, curled against your skin, even though one of them feels uncomfortable. They’re safe, and alive, and full, and there is no need to go downstairs and confront past wrongs, ever. 

You turn to the uncomfortable one and- oh.

"I'm sorry." Says Ash, who looks quietly repentant. _Properly_ repentant. You picked him up in your panic to get your bonded skeletons away from **_Her_** , didn’t you?

"You were not part of the decision to do it." You say, because _this_ skeleton, at least, is free of that sin in your eyes. "Either the soul part or the calling the others part." That sin laid firmly at Orange's feet, and you wonder what you did to make him see you as an enemy. 

Ash looks relieved at your forgiveness, and then blatantly curious in the way you thought only Raven could be.

“Can I ask why you’re all so… scared, of them?” You study Ash and debate one side to the other- it’s not like it’s going to be secret for long, and you do want to control some of the information.

“The Royal Guard Captain broke Crowe’s back and destroyed Raven’s eye.” You tell him evenly, “but she didn’t do just that. The four children she killed in front of every monster in the underground? They were people’s children. Gerson’s son, Grillby’s daughter, a Bunny child, and Ice wolf’s daughter. She was the last alive boss monster, and she killed three other boss monsters to get that right. She’s the one who trapped us underground. And the underground was killing us.” You pause to sort your thoughts. In hindsight, everything seems so obvious.

“There wasn’t enough magic in the air to do anything more than survive, and any food we could scrounge up-“ You flinched. “There wasn’t any. We had to eat the _children_. The bark off of trees. Any dust the Ruins could leak.”

You look away, leaning into Raven’s careful hands and Crowe’s quiet meditation. “The kid might have killed the ruins, but the Captain practically slit our throats herself.” And you hate her for that. Fuck. Hate is too soft of a word; she’s directly responsible for most everything you and your bonded had to suffer for so long. You can’t even think her name without devolving into a berserker rage, that’s how much you feel about her.

“And Toriel?” You flinch against the floor.

“Was my mom.” You admit to the soft blankets and quiet atmosphere. “She died before she could see what I ended up doing. And that’s not _her_.” 

You’re conflicted, because on one hand she’s your mom, you’d love for her to be alive and here, because she died and you still haven’t recovered from that. But you also don’t because she’d be so disappointed, in you and the entire Underground for what ended up happening. And that Toriel isn’t _your_ Toriel, and you’re bitter and sad because you want her to be and you don’t want her to be and she’s _not_ no matter _what_ you want.

You wish Ranger was here. Everything was always easier when he was here.

“Are you going to go meet the kid?” He asks after a minute, something complicated and deep vibrating on his end of the bond. You eye him again, and decide you’d rather not. For Ash’s sanity, if nothing else.

“No.” You stretch out like a cat and then curl around Raven, stroking smooth bone with soft bean pads. “I’m going to stay here.” Maybe if you pretend they don’t exist they’ll go away. They probably won’t but whatever. It’s not your problem.

Crowe stretched out too, his joints letting out a series of cracks as he groaned in appreciation. “I’m going downstairs.” He volunteered, eyes dark with carefully contained violence. You trust him to not _immediately_ fall into a blackout rage- he’s always been the most forgiving, out of all of you, not to mention the exploded tree in the forest somewhere- but you impress upon him the lengths you will go if he gets seriously wounded. He might be Medic-class but your defense is literally legendary; if he needs a meatshield, all he needs to do is ask.

He’s silent as he stalks through the doorway and down the stairs, and you track him carefully as he meets the group at the bottom. 

"How do you do that?" Ash asks, and you make a confused sound. 

"You… can feel them. All the way over there." Ash's non-melted eye socket is glowing a soft purple as he leans into the bond, piggybacking on your senses as you split your focus.

"Integrity." You explain badly, and then correct, "it's- being yourself. Purely yourself. Always. And- to know yourself, you have to be able to distinguish self from other." Everything else just kind of grows from that point.

"You.. can sense that much from it?" He mutters, too quiet for anyone but yourself to hear.

"Mm. Identify different kinds of other." You've never explained the way you think of it to a monster before; you hope he doesn't think it's blasphemous or something. "Magic is- expression of soul. Regular magical senses don't- don't sense what's really there, sense a reflection of self-perceptions. Know yourself, know what you perceive, know what's up." 

Orange is Orange not just for the sweatshirt he wears, but for how your senses identify him as like alcohol. Golden and sweet looking, but despite looks it's a drink that is nothing but trouble. Celeste feels like the open sky, like the moment before you jump off a cliff into the water below, like daring and gall and a little bit of friendly audacity. He feels like a challenge, like that instant you know you're about to reach your goal, and that's- to you, that's literally the open sky. Blood feels like dried blood casually spilled, and Wine feels refined but.. in the rotted way of fermented grapes. Cyan feels like a blanket you remember sharing, and his brother feels like the taste of Grapefruit, or spiked punch. 

"Expands with time. Practice helps." You continue. "Know- echolocation?" It's what you and bats have in common: releasing controlled wavelengths and being able to process the sensory information the reflected wavelengths provide.

"The thing bats do?" Ash asks, confused.

"Can do with magic." You confirm, doing exactly that by sort of pulling at the background magic until it sort of resembled a soft wave. "Also helps." It's why your range is the size of this entire forest, instead of just the house.

Raven looks up from where he's weaving your fur together into a new braid. "Why is it that only you know our language and not them?" He asked.

Ash blinked and gave Raven a wry grin. "Learned from Gaster."

What, the roommate? Ash noticed your confusion. "Gaster was like a father to us Sans-es." He gestures to himself and some vague middle ground. "Problem is, when he died, somehow everyone forgot about him."

"Everyone?" You doubted it. How could Ash tell you about him if that was the case?

He rolled his eyes. "A few remembered bits and pieces, sure. But nobody remembered him. Except us." He looked wistful and sad. "He left us a machine, without notes or anything. When he was dying he somehow… got into the void?" He sounded fondly confused. "We talked. It was supposed to be like a net for falling skeleton monsters. If they were free-floating in the void-"

"-the spell would target them, and summon them to the machine." Raven finished, in the tones of someone deeply regretting their life decisions.

"Yeah." Ash frowned at Raven, "Exactly."

"Raven?" You asked warily, feeling that swirling focus narrow down to a point, the solution he didn't want to an equation he'd been trying to solve.

"That machine downstairs." Raven didn't ask. 

"...Yes?" Ash asked, not getting it. It clicked.

"The mechanical summoning spell." You stated, in the tones of deep realization. God's magical toilet bowl ride was through the void. 

"... That's... accurate." Ash commented, still not getting it.

"How we all got here." You explain poorly. "You said- Gaster's machine. Summons skeletons free-falling through the void. We were- falling." You leave it at that. 

It's not something you like to think about, how fragile an alternate dimension really is. You're somewhat uniquely gifted in knowledge of the subject, due to your somewhat faded past. It makes it hard to remember sometimes, and other times hard to forget. You kind of can't help wondering why your dimension decided to die, though. Alternate realities, universes, and worlds can be both incredibly strong and insanely fragile, and yours lasted thousands of years. What shattered yours? What shattered _theirs_? From the sounds of it, Ash had been outside the normal grips of reality for a while, from what he's mentioned about talking to someone who was in the void. 

"In a blatant change of subject," You say after a few moments of anxiety-inducing silence. "What's a reset?" 

Ash flipped between several different emotions fast enough you couldn't tell them apart. "There was a kid in the Underground with enough Determination to control time there." He deadpanned, and you should really expect the complete fuckery at this point.

"What the fuck?" You say anyways, because literally what the fuck.

"That makes literally no sense?" You tilt your head sideways at him, trying to work that out in your mind. Control time there? Like the Underground is separated from the Aboveground? The barrier was barely wet cardboard in your world, and it was only the fact you didn't want to damage the aging spider web more that kept your senses from piercing the one-ply veil. Was it different here? Also, the idea of a small child with the ability to control time at all was nightmare fuel, and you already have enough of those.

Raven raised an eyebrow at you. "Okay, _magic_ makes no sense, but this is just bullshit." You correct, because it is. You're going to tuck this information into a far corner and ignore it, because small children fear no man or God and have funny ideas about morality. The ability to casually fuck over causality in the hands of a child? No thanks, brain.

Ash looks entertained by your reaction, which. Good for him. You squint in his direction. "Shut up." You demand.

He raised his hands with that same stupid grin and you squinted at him before returning to Crowe, who was almost boiling in place with how pissed he was. Should you go downstairs? On one hand, social interaction, but on the other hand, you don't want Crowe to be casually dusting your landlords. 

_ You'd _ like to be the ones casually dusting your landlords. At least if you do it there's a moral high ground; Crowe is more likely to start a berserker rage and  _ bleed _ his enemies to death than just snap their necks and be done with it. 

You look to Raven, and then Ash. If you're going downstairs you're taking them both with you, for the backup if literally nothing else. Raven was already practically atop you, and Ash was cuddled up enough it didn't matter, which was sweet of him.

You slowly stood on all fours, and the two skeletons went with you, Raven climbing onto your back and Ash just letting your movements move him. 

"Gonna rescue Crowe." You explained to the sitting and flopped over skeletons on your back. Gotta face the music some time, after all. 

Raven's anger sparked, and he froze for a moment, clenching and unclenching his hands as he wrestled it down again. You walked, down the hall and down the stairs and almost right into the back of Crowe's legs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowe and Raven are both gothic fonts, which is why they're chosen like that  
> It's 12 am I can grammar how I want  
> I'm nap now gnight  
> (Me in the morning; Casually re-enacting "what's this" except with grammar mistakes and points where my adhd swerved the plot to the side)  
> im going to keep updating this chapter as my muse dictates so fair warning lol


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Almost finished this chapter before a depressive episode hit me like a sledgehammer to the front of a speeding train. Will probably continue with it later, when the depression has receeded again. Happy thanksgiving.
> 
> Edit, at 2 am, after 12 straight hours of playing stardew valley with my sister: Ah, I feel Refreshed.

_Ghost Rider._ Is your first, somewhat random thought after you swerve around to flank him, neither of your passengers giving a single twitch to show that they’re anything but calm and relaxed atop your fluffy bulk. 

Crowe isn’t speaking, just standing there, posture wide open and pointed as he stared down at the skeletons on the couch. He’s staring them down like the power of his gaze will knock some sense into them, and you can actually watch the sins crawling down their backs in real time. 

Toriel is standing behind the kitchen counter, looking politely confused as she watches the silent stare-down going on between Crowe and the couch full of skeletons. Next to her is a human and- oh. Huh. In a leap of logic only main characters and people with ADHD get, you think you know why your dimension collapsed now, and it had everything to do with that striped shirt, and particularly the human wearing it. You didn't think it would still fit them when they grew, but are apparently proven wrong.

You have the kind of morbid thought of _do I still have your ligaments in my teeth?_ And swipe the inside of your mouth with a tongue to check; no, you don't even have the salty-bitter taste of their blood in your mouth. 

A child in the underground with enough Determination to control time there, huh? And every skeleton, in completely different universes, knows them? History might not exactly repeat but it sure fucking rhymes. No wonder the void sucked you in like a toilet bowl: you had just killed the focal point and Nexus of your own reality.

You should probably be feeling guilt right now, but can't scrounge any of it up. You just feel empty and tired. There's a theory, about how alternate universes and dimensions and worlds are organized, and it's on a scale of 'here to hell', where the universes closer to hell have more of a warped balancing scale, and everything is raw and hollow. Warhammer 40k is a pretty good example of a universe being close to hell, in that five people have to die in order for someone to make a morally _neutral_ decision at any given time, and any improvements require at least one planet destroyed. Minimum. The universes that are closer to hell are more like meat grinders, or maybe uncaring, unloving gods. 

Seeing this… well. It's all perspective, really.

You were almost lucky, in that you were in agony, your bones shifting and growing, your organs moving, instead of out _there_ , snarling over stolen dust and fetid, rotting blood. You don't remember the friends you think you had, your entire world narrowed down to two skeletons and you. You couldn't remember what connections you used to have, except the one, and she was already dead. Raven used to have friends, you know. You can even vaguely recall their names. Grillby, Doggo, G.D. and L.D., and others that you can see in your minds eye but not name. Crowe used to be friends with _blue scales_. There's a constant, beating heart

( _slightly off-beat_ ) 

that is their pain, their anguish drifting constantly in the background, the pain of a connection freshly severed. You're lucky, in that you've always had an aching void where your heart should be.

( _Ha. You wish._ )

"Hey." Raven greeted Crowe, quiet, violent rage tucked behind his teeth for later. He was radiating quite a bit of vindicated satisfaction through your bond, enough that you had to bite back a charmed grin. Honestly, this skeleton…

Crowe grunted, angling his body more towards Raven to show his willingness to listen, while still staring down the skeletons on the couch. He rubbed the scar on his throat consideringly as he eyed them and the goat monster behind the counter, and you decided to step in.

"Hi." You greeted the group behind the countertop, and for a blink you could see another child behind the first, a red-eyed spirit, before it disappeared. You checked your other senses, and the child _didn't_ disappear. Not a halucination then. Just… weirdly tucked behind the other child's soul. Weird as in _familiar_ ; what does that child have to do with you?

"Greetings." The Queen smiled gently down at you. "My name is Toriel. What shall I call you?"

"Call me Carrion." You, reluctantly, kind of liked her. "Who's that?" You dipped your head to the weird twin-soul, aiming for polite.

[My name Frisk] Frisk signed directly into your soul. ASL, huh? Haven't seen that in a while.

Still, that didn't answer all of your question. You eyed where your other senses told you the other child was, and while your gaze was somewhat pointed, you didn't say anything. Unlike some people _,_ you have this revolutionary concept called _tact_.

[Hi Frisk] You signed back, not with your soul, and one-handed, careful not to unbalance your passengers. The child grins, and you kind of felt disconnected for a moment- red eyes that look brown, you think that looks cool, even though you _know_ you're supposed to be frightened or whatever, and can even feel the phantom sensation trail down your back, but it's not quite _there_. Yellow eyes would be creepier, you think, and also cooler.

You grin back, ignoring what you're supposed to feel for what you actually _do_ ; there is no part to play for uncaring eyes here. You don't have to pretend. 

[Eyes red- C-O-O-L] You fingerspell, unable to remember the sign for 'cool' and probably not able to do it one-handed.

You didn't have social skills even before you turned into a massive skeletal abomination, but Frisk- and specifically, Frisk being a _child_ \- remind you of something.

"Miss Toriel?" You blink up at the friendly goat monster.

"Oh dear," Toriel put a hand to her mouth, honestly charmed, and you perked up and wagged your tail a bit. "Just call me Toriel."

Fuck but she's so _honest._ Some people have charisma and they're _slimy_ with it, but she's honestly touched. People put their whole minds into pretending to act the way she actually is. Hot damn.

"Ok Toriel. Do you know what month it is?" American sex education is probably on the same level as plague doctor-age medicine, but you know starvation has effects on your cycle and so does shape shifting into a weird… whatever you are. What are you, honestly? You should find a mirror later and try to figure it out. Do you even have a cycle anymore? 

You don't know. Your lower skeletal structure- from where your ribs end to just below your stomach- is completely bare to the air, and what barely passes as a human hip bone covers your lower body from there. You don't really know human anatomy, but the area that hurt every month you started to bleed was still there. So maybe? You'll have to figure it out.

Not that it wasn't a guessing game _before_ you turned into a Monster, or at least half-monster, but now you need the knowledge for a _different_ reason.

Can you even get pregnant like this? How do monsters get pregnant? You'll have to ask Crowe. He'll definitely know. You kind of want to see his face when you ask about contraceptives. 

In your defence, you kind of had other problems than your libido before you were flushed down here, but now that hunger is only _generally_ a problem, and mainly only for you, your libido has awakened and has _opinions_. 

"It's October 29th, Dear." She gave you a confused look, and oh holy shit. That's so ironic but also it's almost Halloween and wow, that is _so ironic_. 

You don't even need a costume; that's _hilarious_. 

Trick or treaters are definitely not going to walk that whole way up through the spooky woods to the house though, which is sad, but half the fun of halloween is the costume and the discounted candy so you're fine.

When was the last time you had chocolate? Damn.

It's _spooktober_ , too. How many skeleton jokes can you make before everyone around you gets fed up? You're eager to find out.

"And the year?" You were born in 2001, so maybe now you'll finally figure out your age.

"It's 2120, Dear. Are you alright?" Toriel gave you a concerned look, and you just. 

_Haha, what the_ **_fuck_ ** _?!_ You're not 100+ years old. You _can't be_ . There is absolutely no way that the Famine lasted for 50+ years, _what?!_ Your timekeeping skills are shit, but you would have remembered _one hundred birthdays_! 

Not that you celebrated birthdays down there once the Famine started, and monsters can live _way_ longer than a hundred years, but _fucking huh?!_ Humans can't! 

...humans can't sleep as long as you can, wrapping your shed magic against your soul and your bond and meditating until you're needed. How much time passed when you were asleep?

Are you even human anymore?

"We were underground for a while." You side-smiled at Toriel, projecting awkwardness and absolutely none of your own anxiety and curiosity. You are _definitely_ talking to Crowe after this, holy shit.

You turned away from the conversation and side-eye Raven on your back, silently panicking.”There’s no way the Famine lasted longer than maybe thirty years.” He confirmed, also confused. “But it certainly didn’t last _negative ten years._ ” 

“Dimensional flux?” You offer, mind blue-screened with “WHAT” printed in solid white letters in your brain. “Raven, I fell to the underground in _2017_.”

Raven frowned at you, radiating disbelief so hard you didn’t need the bond to feel it. “Carrion, I’m _pretty sure_ you fell in 2110.” And by ‘pretty sure’ he meant _absolutely certain_.

“Raven, I fell from the Aboveworld to Underground in 2017. I’m sure of it.” Ranger died in 2016, December 14th. December 17th was when you found his body. It was March 27th when you realized enough was enough.

A wave of dissonance makes you flinch, and for an instant you wish for glasses you don't have to clean. The wrongness between the two times- one hundred years almost, what the fuck- 

(You've never had glasses before, even when you needed them. Ranger couldn't afford it, and neither could you.)

-feels like two puzzle pieces that you can't figure out how to fit.

Ash does, though. "The Void." He offers, gunmetal silver eyes flashing in the light. 

The Void; of course. 'some call it the howling; others call it hell.' Other names you'd call it are; the Warp, an abomination, and 'the space between the barrier-to-underground and the barrier-to-aboveworld.' 

"Time doesn't work right there." You remember _reading_ something about that, before. Your eyes grow heavier for an instant, and Ash's perpetual rictus grin softens.

(You can't remember where you read it.)

( **the barrier was built wrong** , you didn't quite hear as much as feel, scorching across your soul like someone was tattooing it into the fabric of your very being.)

(In the distance, a cloister bell rings. The beat sounds like the beginning of a war drum.)

You turn to Toriel, who you don't want to see you as rude for having another conversation in the middle of your own. "Sorry. Technical difficulties." You give her a sideways grin, and turn back to Crowe.

"Done yet?" You ask him, cheeky. You eye the recovering skeletons exaggeratedly, and then turn back to him. "Looks sorry enough to me."

(Dancing on the edges of a white lie. History doesn't exactly repeat but it sure fucking rhymes. How very right you can be, my dear.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hilariously, this was inspired both by my fondness for shapeshifting cannibals, and a picture I saw once of what I know now is called Axetale. I just went through the Axetale wiki, and holy hot shit. Hallowed!Tale fits hilariously well with Axetale. Honestly, I might use that…  
> Me getting into undertale fanfiction and fanfiction writing in general is actually all thanks to Seraphim Sans. 
> 
> I looked it up, and it says Chara fell in 2015, and Frisk fell about one hundred years exactly after. Carrion fell after Chara fell, after Chara died in fact (which I'm choosing to say is 3-5 years after they fall) and it took two years for Toriel to move to the Ruins, and about ten years for her to recover, and Carrion technically falls- from the aboveground- in 2017, but falls actually Underground about four years before Frisk does.
> 
> The Feast is 6 months after Frisk ran through, and the Famine lasted about 25 years. So, Carrion should be at the most an upbeat forty, right? ;)
> 
> Also, in my defence, I'm also designing an entire planet and magic system for Bastardized DnD that I'll probably never use but it's fun alongside this. Plus just generalized mental disorders and depression. And college. And work.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it doesnt feel like febuary. it still feels like 2020.

It's a complete lie, of course, but you kind of have to get along with your landlords, even if you think that they have the combined emotional intelligence of a box of spaghetti noodles. You kind of don't have anywhere else to go or a source of income, and that's not even going to mention the expected xenophobia, so it's not so much an option as it is a choice.

You're going to be stuck together. Might as well be able to at least stand having each other in the same room. Or at least be able to  _ pretend _ ; you might be what amounts to a foreigner to Monster culture, but Raven and Crowe are  _ not _ . And you can feel the righteous indignation right up alongside your own shocked violation. It gives you the same feeling accidentally asking about sensitive topics does; like there's a taboo that's been crossed, and it's somewhere in the room waiting to  _ pounce _ . It’s the first time the taboo-crossing is someone else’s fault, though, and you can’t help but want to sit back and enjoy the chaos.

A bunch of complete strangers now know the secrets you feel most guilty about, even the ones that you  _ didnt remember _ , and are going to judge you about it in their own heads without having your whole point of view. You want to scream. The strangers also have power over you, in the form of you not being able to fucking  _ leave  _ or godsdamn  _ retaliate _ because you have  _ no upper ground here _ . You feel trapped, caged, under a predator that won't let you even  _ scream _ . 

You don't think about it. You  _ can't  _ think about it. Thinking about it would open the doors to either a depressive spiral, a flashback, or a panic attack, and you truly can't afford any of those when you  _ need  _ these skeletons to  _ like you. _ Until you can find separate shelter and stability away from them you need them to be  _ predictable _ , and to keep them predictable you need to at least pretend to care about social niceties so that you can hide behind the unwritten rules they provide. That these skeletons decided to violate those unwritten rules on a fucking  _ whim _ means they're  _ not  _ predictable and your anxiety is trying to kill you via asthma-induced lung malfunctions and you  _ won't let it. _

Calm. You are calm. That is a complete fucking lie but you, unlike  _ some people _ , can believably  _ pretend _ . 

Fuck. What you really need is a reliable coping mechanism and a fucking spray bottle for these  _ dolts _ , but you don't have those right now, so make due with what you have.

You smile blankly at them and then turn and eye Crowe in bitter acceptance. Until you can be free, this is just something to be endured. So you will endure. 

(For half of an instant, less than a second, your Heart flashes a very red sort of purple. It fades near-instantly back into your familiar Royal blue.)

(For exactly that long, a specter appears behind you, of an androgenous figure in black-and-white stripes. They have a silver bird skull wrapped around the column of their neck. They smile fondly at your back, eyes gold, before they vanish.)

Crowe can feel you, of course, every inch that screams of the loss of control. And you can feel them, the parts of Crowe that are whispering for him to find something safe and hide behind it, to cook or clean and avoid conflict. You can also hear the parts of him that are practically baying for blood. You can feel Raven, who is fighting to stay on your back instead of in the air, calculating velocities and seeing the emptiness between everything as he tries not to immediately go for the bloodbath.

You're tired. You want to sleep. You don't feel…  _ right _ . Just hollow and aching and worn out, like a floppy sack of leather stretched too tightly over your bones. 

(You've never had asthma before. You had anxiety, yes, and panic attacks. So why is your first instinct when you ribcage clenches to call the shadows hiding in your lungs  _ asthma _ ?)

You can't focus on that, though. You want to ask Crowe how magical sex works. You want to ask Frisk if they're related to Chara. You want to figure out what you look like. You want to bone your protective skeletons and feel their magic through your veins and howl your bond to the sun in defiance because you are  _ alive _ . You  _ made it _ . You're all- Crowe and Raven and You- up in the light of the  _ stars _ instead of down below. 

Also you're very curious. You know that magic has instilled an entirely different culture than your own into them, because of course it has, and are curious as how to… exploit it. You were not able to feel the magic in the very bones of this world before, and all of you still managed to fuck just fine those few times you did it. You wonder what the addition of a new sense will do to that experience, and more specifically, if it'll white out like the rest of your senses.

Maybe not here, though. It's kind of impolite to fuck in someone else's house. But you're… is full the correct term? You feel like a water balloon stretched around too much liquid, and you need to get the magic  _ out _ . Beyond that your mind is currently playing in the gutter and you don't have the time or the space to cash the checks your libido is trying to get you to pay.

This is old hat; when the empty fog comes rolling in, distract yourself in any way you can. It being your own mind, the whole 'if you ignore it it goes away' thing actually works, kind of. Most of the time. And your libido is always ready to play.

You would like to see some babybones, though. Someday. When you're all safe.

That's an  _ option _ again, and you're… awake. Aware. You do a circuit around Crowe's legs, and just breathe. On top of you, Ash is doing the same.

One of the benefits of being able to feel the magic in the very bones of a world is that you can say with complete honesty that Karma exists. 

“That was really shitty of you.” You deadpan at the skeletons after a few moments of watching them recover, and recovering yourself. 

“Sorry.” Wine whispers roughly, head in his hands now that it isn’t off in some distant land. He’s... crying. Shit. How do you comfort him you don’t know him well enough and don’t feel comfortable enough around him to give him a hug!

“Didn’t know he was going to do that.” Red has a hand over his eyesocket like he can feel the healed wound that isn’t there, staring into some distant space like it’s done something to frighten him.

Ah, empathy. You just got soul-raped and forced to watch, but these two were kind of just as violated as you were. That… hit some kind of emotional trigger for them, didn’t it? Some vulnerable button, and now they’re crying. You go over and rub the top of your skull on Wine’s leg, butting at his knees.

“Hey. You’re forgiven.” You can’t feel angry at these two. They’re crying for you. They, at least, are forgiven. Cyan and Orange on the other hand… You don’t even look in their direction. You look at the kitchen. It seems everyone is finally out of the car, and blatantly staring at the couch skeletons and you.

“Hi.” You greet Grapefruit, Celeste, Toriel, Frisk, and the small yellow dinosaur. “Call me Carrion, if you didn’t hear. This is Crowe,-“ Your taller bonded quirks a smile at them from behind his orange-and-green eyes, “-and Raven-“ He grins at them with eye lights lit gold and cyan, and you don’t know why they’re doing this but flash deep blue eye lights tinted almost purple at the group of them in greeting anyways.

You tilt your head to the final skeleton on your back, and introduce them. “-and this is Ash.” You don’t see or feel him doing anything, which makes what  _ your _ group did a little strange. 

Toriel stepped up to the occasion, smiling gently at your group while the others looked too confused to do more than stare. “Good evening, Crowe, Raven, and Ash. I am Toriel, Queen of the Monsters."

“Should I bow?” You tilt your head and ask, because you have passengers and that sounds kind of dangerous, actually. Toriel smiled at you and shook her head.

“There’s no need, dear." She gestured to the others. "These are my friends. You've met Papyrus," Grapefruit waves cheerfully. "And Frisk," Frisk waves just as cheerfully. Behind them, the spectre waves more mockingly. Rude. “But let me introduce you to the others. This is Alphys, my Royal Scientist, and Undyne, the Captain of the Royal Guard.” 

The bond spikes with acrid hate, before you press it down and mind your tongue. You’ve never met this Royal Scientist before. The only Royal Scientists you’ve met have been in stories

(and dreams.)

You can’t speak. You are the calm and quiet nothing beneath the force of your own anger and anxiety and you can’t even move with the knowledge that if you did the poison would leak out.

“Hey.” Raven picks up your slack, tugging gently at your fur and making sparks slide under your skin. Crowe, behind him, is holding his ribcage with his lower arms, and you wrap your tiny tail around his closest leg. You completely understand and empathize  _ entirely _ but reality forces you to question the validity of free will and your ability to choose all the time so!  _ Just get through it _ .  _ Nothing lasts forever. _

"What're you studying?" Raven, the nerd, asks Alphys, because of course he does. You all ignore how hard you're not speaking to the Captain, because you don't want to go there.

"W-w-well…" Alphys stutters, the yellow scales on her cheeks growing pink with the attention. "R-r-right n-now w-we're-" the Captain nudged her gently, and Alphys side-eyed her in relief before taking a deep breath and thinking through her words.

"Right now we're st-studying the diff-fferenc-ces," She took a deep breath again. And wow, a-plus coping mechanism you got there. Go, you yellow dinosaur you. "Differences between human souls and m-monster s-s-souls." 

"Like?" You ask, actually curious now. "Their different reactions to stimuli or…?" But you thought that the reactions were different because experiences and trauma shape a soul and everyone is different due to that? 

"No, the- um, structural differences?" Her voice cracked and she winced. "How Human Souls can store more Determination and Monster Souls can't." Her voice smoothed out as she shifted into a teacher's mindset. "And why that is." 

"But isn't that just because-" you stopped. You've never said your theory out loud before. How do you explain it? "Um, human souls-" Wait that won't make sense without- "Monster's souls are kind of their whole body? But wait-" that doesn't make sense without the  _ other  _ thing. "Okay. So you know how magic is an expression of the soul?" And the wording there is very deliberate. 

Alphys practically radiated curiosity. She nodded. Raven, on your back, was just as curious. Wait, you haven't told him your theory yet, have you?

Ash just… tried not to directly stare at Grapefruit. And soak up his proximity as much as possible. Okay then.

"Okay. So, Monsters'  _ bodies _ are an expression of their magic, which is an expression of their soul." The fact that most monsters generally looked like their parents was a result of those experiences they've been through. As striped-shirts, Monsters' bodies- and magic- are a  _ lot  _ more flexible than the adults.

"Monsters' magic, some of it, is wrapped up in their bodies. Keeping their bodies running, etcetera.  _ Human _ souls don't have that… function." You pause and sort your thoughts. "Human bodies aren't made of magic like Monster bodies are. Magic is an expression of the soul. Magic costs  _ energy _ . Human souls are…" squashed? "Compressed?" Locked up tight and unable to manifest even a spark unless they encounter a Monster. Or, well, intense trauma. 

Alphys froze. You waited for a few seconds, getting more and more anxious.

"If that makes sense? I don't know Soul Anatomy." Did you just screw something up? You hope not. You hope you didn't screw up some unspoken rule.

Alphys makes a high-pitched noise, mind going miles a minute and coherent words degenerating into stumbling, stuttered, high-speed word vomit.

What. Um? You pick up some scientific jargon in the mess- anima-something or other, and wow, latin, that means soul doesn't it?- before you stop trying to translate the high-speed train wreck.

You turn your wide eyes at Raven, but he’s looking at you like you just sprouted a diamond out of your forehead. 

“Biology. Soul  _ biology. _ ” He breathed, and????? Yes?? Biology?

You turn to Crowe instead, and he’s got the same ‘a misconception I had about the universe has been corrected’ feel but more ‘oh the answer was right in front of me i just forgot to look sideways’. His chin is in his hand and he’s staring at the wall. No help from that front.

Ash, who just feels amused, answered your unspoken question. “Monsters are taught that all SOULs are the same. Even if they look different.”

“But that doesn’t make sense? We're different  _ species _ .” You complain. “It’s horseshit. Do we even use our Souls in the same way?” You can see how that misconception might come into popular use, though. Monsters and humans haven’t shared the same space since… you want to say Greece, like Ancient Greece, and if all either species has to go on is myths and legends and the examples of  _ your own people _ , then you sort of start to assume all “people'' follow the same patterns yours do. Which is horseshit, but also why biases are a known thing.

“No.” Ash says, and his emotions shut down like the jaws of an emotional bear trap. 

You blinked at him, and then the conversation you literally just had before this registers, and fight the urge to facepalm. Repeatedly. ‘Child who controlled time’. Right. Fuck, you’re stupid. 

"No but seriously. A Monster's soul is like, the brain _and_ the heart _and_ the lungs." You go on anyways, because gods forbid you shut your mouth or apologize. Maybe if you move on from the subject it'll get better? "Humans have those already. So what does _their_ soul do?" There had to be some kind of evolutionary benefit to having a soul, or else you wouldn't have it. Magic might work but you can only access magic through monsters, which were gone for at the very least four thousand years, and heavy trauma, which isn't exactly conductive to living long enough to pass on your genes. Maybe it's like wisdom teeth? Just Just an extra organ you don't necessarily need anymore?

"Magic." Ash deadpans, and. no, that didn't help. you're just making it worse.

You grimaced. "Sorry." You did not mean it that way but you should also not be stepping on other people's weak points so.

Fuck what other subject can you change this to? "So in a blatant change of subject-" You start, because fuck this and everything and you want to go back to bed. "What are you studying?" You ask Grapefruit, who looks a little confused but more like he wasn't paying attention than he actually cares about what you think.  


The Captain elbowed him friendly. Friendily. "This NERD is gonna be in the Royal Guard!" She grinned and you. Cannot Handle This. 

"That's nice." You say politely, before turning back to the queen. "Well, nice to meet you. I'm sorry but I have to go. Have a nice rest of your day."

You keep up the polite mask until the goodbyes are had and you're out of sight, and then drop it like a hot coal. And then drop yourself on the fluffy nest that is your bed.

"Fuck I hate people." You muter into the blankets, mainly to yourself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one fought me literally the entire way through. Carrion i understand you just got your brain back but stop talking please. please.
> 
> im posting because yall deserve something nice during this absolute hellscape of a time and its not going to get any bigger just sitting there.
> 
> Original chapter notes;  
> Integrity is surprisingly flexible. But then again, so is Perseverance.
> 
> (You're going to need a lot more than that to take care of me, my dear.)
> 
> (no worries, beloved. we all return to the cycle some day.)
> 
> (None of the gods were made perfect.)

**Author's Note:**

> Ash is Geno!Sans, Wine is Fell!Papyrus, Blood is Fell!Sans, Cyan is Original Sans, Grapefruit is the Original Papyrus, Orange is Swap!Papyrus, Celeste is Swap!Sans.


End file.
